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FRONDES   AGRESTES 


READINGS  IN  "MODERN  PAINTERS" 


CHOSEN  AT  HER  PLEASURE,  BY 
THE  AUTHOR'S   FRIEND 

THE  YOUNGER  LADY  OF  THE  THWAITE 
CONISTON 

**  Sfargtt  agresUs  tibi  lilva  frondes  " 


NEW  YORK 

THOMAS  Y.   CROWELL  &  CO. 

PUBLISHERS 


Colletre 
Librai-y 

If  7^ 
PREFACE. 


I  HAVE  been  often  asked  to  republish  the  first  book 
of  nune  which  the  public  noticed,  and  which,  hitherto, 
remains  their  favorite,  in  a  more  easily  attainable 
form  than  that  of  its  existing  editions.  I  am,  how- 
ever, resolved  never  to  republish  the  book  as  a  whole ; 
some  parts  of  it  being,  by  the  established  fame  of 
Turner,  rendered  unnecessary;  and  others  having 
been  always  useless,  in  their  praise  of  excellence 
which  the  public  will  never  give  the  labor  necessary 
to  discern.  But,  finding  lately  that  one  of  my  dearest 
friends,  who,  in  advanced  age,  retains  the  cheerful- 
ness and  easily  delighted  temper  of  bright  youth,  had 
written  out,  for  her  own  pleasure,  a  large  number  of 
passages  from  "  Modem  Painters,"  it  seemed  to  me 
certain  that  what  such  a  person  felt  to  be  useful  to 
herself,  could  not  but  be  useful  also  to  a  class  of 
readers  whom  I  much  desired  to  please,  and  who 
would  sometimes  enjoy,  in  my  early  writings,  what  I 
never  should  myself  have  offered  them.  I  asked  my 
friend,  therefore,  to  add  to  her  own  already  chosen 
series,  any  other  passages  she  thought  likely  to  be  of 
permanent  interest  to  general  readers ;  and  I  have 
printed  her  selections  in  absolute  submission  to  her 
judgment,  merely  arranging  the  pieces  she  sent  me 
in  the  order  which  seemed  most  convenient  for  the 
itt 


iv  PREFACE. 

reciprocal  bearing  of  their  fragmentary  meanings,  and 
adding  here  and  there  an  explanatory  note;  or,  it 
may  be,  a  deprecatory  one,  in  cases  where  my  mind 
had  changed.  That  she  did  me  the  grace  to  write 
every  word  with  her  own  hands,  adds,  in  my  eyes, 
and  will,  I  trust,  in  the  readers'  also,  to  the  possible 
claims  of  the  little  book  on  their  sympathy;  and 
although  I  hope  to  publish  some  of  the  scientific  and 
technical  portions  of  the  original  volumes  in  my  own 
large  editions,  the  selections  here  made  by  my  friend 
under  her  quiet  woods  at  Coniston  —  the  Unter- 
Walden  of  England  —  will,  I  doubt  not,  bring  within 
better  reach  of  many  readers,  for  whom  I  am  not  now 
able  myself  to  judge  or  choose,  such  service  as  the 
book  was  ever  capable  of  rendering,  in  the  illustration 
of  the  powers  of  nature,  and  intercession  for  her  now 
too  often  despised  and  broken  peace. 

Herne  Hill, 
Sth  December,  1874. 


CONTENTS. 

FACK 

Preface iii 

SECTION 

I.    Principles  of  Art I 

II.    Power  and  Office  of  Imagination.       .  ii 

III.  Illustrative:  The  Sky     ....  39 

IV.  Illustrative:  Streams  and  Sea      .       .  71 
V.    Illustrative  :  Mountains  ....  82 

VI.    Illustrative:  Stones        .       .        .       .118 

VII.    Illustrative:  Plants  and  Flowers        .  127 

VIII.    Education 155 

IX.    MoRAUTiEs 167 


FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

SECTION   I. 

PRINCIPLES  OF  ART. 

1.  Perfect  taste  is  the  faculty  of  receiving  the 
greatest  possible  pleasure  from  those  material 
sources  which  are  attractive  to  our  moral  nature 
in  its  purity  and  perfection ;  but  why  we  receive 
pleasure  from  some  forms  and  colors,  and  not 
from  others,  is  no  more  to  be  asked  or  answered 
than  why  we  like  sugar  and  dislike  wormwood. 

2.  The  temper  by  which  right  taste  is  formed 
is  characteristically  patient.  It  dwells  upon  what 
is  submitted  to  it.  It  does  not  trample  upon  it, 
—  lest  it  should  be  pearls,  even  though  it  look 
like  husks.     It  is  good  ground,  penetrable,  reten- 


2  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

tive;  it  does  not  send  up  thorns  of  unkind 
thoughts,  to  choke  the  weak  seed ;  it  is  hungry 
and  thirsty  too,  and  drinks  all  the  dew  that  falls 
on  it.  It  is  an  honest  and  good  heart,  that 
shows  no  too  ready  springing  before  the  sun  be 
up,  but  fails  not  afterwards;  it  is  distrustful  of 
itself,  so  as  to  be  ready  to  believe  and  to  try  all 
things ;  and  yet  so  trustful  of  itself,  that  it  will 
neither  quit  what  it  has  tried,  nor  take  anything 
without  trying.  And  the  pleasure  which  it  has 
in  things  that  it  finds  true  and  good,  is  so  great, 
that  it  cannot  possibly  be  led  aside  by  any  tricks 
of  fashion,  or  diseases  of  vanity;  it  cannot  be 
cramped  in  its  conclusions  by  partialities  and 
hypocrisies ;  its  visions  and  its  delights  are  too 
penetrating,  —  too  living,  —  for  any  whitewashed 
object  or  shallow  fountain  long  to  endure  or  sup- 
ply. It  clasps  all  that  it  loves  so  hard  that  it 
crushes  it  if  it  be  hollow. 

3.   It  is   the  common  consent  of  men  that 
whatever  branch  of  any  pursuit  ministers  to  the 


PRINCIPLES  OF  ART.  3 

bodily  comforts,  and  regards  material  uses,  is 
ignoble,  and  whatever  part  is  addressed  to  the 
mind  only,  is  noble ;  and  that  geology  does  bet- 
ter in  reclothing  dry  bones  and  revealing  lost 
creations,  than  in  tracing  veins  of  lead  and  beds 
of  iron;  astronomy  better  in  opening  to  us  the 
houses  of  heaven,  than  in  teaching  navigation; 
botany  better  in  displaying  structure  than  in  ex- 
pressing juices;  surgery  better  in  investigating 
organization  than  in  setting  limbs.  —  Only  it  is 
ordained  that,  for  our  encouragement,  every  step 
we  make  in  the  more  exalted  range  of  science 
adds  something  also  to  its  practical  applicabili- 
ties ;  that  all  the  great  phenomena  of  nature,  the 
knowledge  of  which  is  desired  by  the  angels 
only,  by  us  partly,  as  it  reveals  to  farther  vision 
the  being  and  the  glory  of  Him  in  whom  they 
rejoice  and  we  live,  dispense  yet  such  kind  influ- 
ences and  so  much  of  material  blessing  as  to  be 
joyfully  felt  by  all  inferior  creatures,  and  to  be 
desired  by  them  with  such  single  desire  as  the 
imperfection  of  their  nature   may  admit;   that 


4  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

the  strong  ton-ents,  which,  in  their  own  gladness, 
fill  the  hills  with  hollow  thunder,  and  the  vales 
with  winding  light,  have  yet  their  bounden  charge 
of  field  to  feed,  and  barge  to  bear;  that  the 
fierce  flames  to  which  the  Alp  owes  its  upheaval 
and  the  volcano  its  terror,  temper  for  us  the 
metal  vein,  and  warm  the  quickening  spring; 
and  that  for  our  incitement,  I  say,  not  our  re- 
ward,—  for  knowledge  is  its  own  reward, — 
herbs  have  their  healing,  stones  their  precious- 
ness,  and  stars  their  times. 

4.  Had  it  been  ordained  by  the  Almighty^ 
that  the  highest  pleasures  of  sight  should  be 
those  of  most  difficult  attainment,  and  that  to 
arrive  at  them  it  should  be  necessary  to  accumu- 
late gilded  palaces,  tower  over  tower,  and  pile 


1  The  .reader  must  observe,  that  having  been  thorotighly 
disciplined  in  the  Evangelical  schools,  I  supposed  myself,  at 
four-and-twenty,  to  know  all  about  the  ordinances  of  the 
Almighty.  Nevertheless,  the  practical  contents  of  the  sentence 
are  good;  if  only  they  are  intelligible,  which  I  doubt. 


PRINCIPLES  OF  ART.  5 

artificial  mountains  around  insinuated  lakes,  there 
would  never  have  been  a  direct  contradiction 
between  the  unselfish  duties  and  the  inherent 
desires  of  every  individual.  But  no  such  contra- 
diction exists  in  the  system  of  Divine  Provi- 
dence ;  which,  leaving  it  open  to  us,  if  we  will,  as 
creatures  in  probation,  to  abuse  this  sense  like 
every  other,  and  pamper  it  with  selfish  and 
thoughtless  vanities,  as  we  pamper  the  palate 
with  deadly  meats,  until  the  appetite  of  tasteful 
cruelty  is  lost  in  its  sickened  satiety,  incapable  of 
pleasure  unless,  Caligula  like,  it  concentrates  the 
labor  of  a  million  of  lives  into  the  sensation  of 
an  hour,  —  leaves  it  also  open  to  us,  by  humble 
and  loving  ways,  to  make  ourselves  susceptible 
of  deep  delight,  which  shall  not  separate  us  from 
our  fellows,  nor  require  the  sacrifice  of  any  duty 
or  occupation,  but  which  shall  bind  us  closer  to 
men  and  to  God,  and  be  with  us  always,  har- 
monized with  every  action,  consistent  with  every 
claim,  unchanging  and  eternal. 


6  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

5.  A  great  Idealist  never  can  be  egotistic. 
The  whole  of  his  power  depends  upon  his  losing 
sight  and  feeling  of  his  own  existence,  and  be- 
coming a  mere  witness  and  mirror  of  truth,  and 
a  scribe  of  visions,  —  always  passive  in  sight, 
passive  in  utterance,  lamenting  continually  that 
he  cannot  completely  reflect  nor  clearly  utter  all 
he  has  seen,  —  not  by  any  means  a  proud  state 
for  a  man  to  be  in.  But  the  man  who  has  no 
invention  is  always  setting  things  in  order,^  and 
putting  the  world  to  rights,  and  mending,  and 
beautifying,  and  pluming  himself  on  his  doings, 
as  supreme  in  all  ways. 

)t^.  So  far  as  education  does  indeed  tend  to 
make  the  senses  delicate,  and  the  perceptions 
accurate,  and  thus  enables  people  to  be  pleased 
with    quiet    instead  of   gaudy  color,  and  with 

1 1  am  now  a  comic  illustration  of  this  sentence,  myself. 
I  have  not  a  ray  of  invention  in  all  my  brains  ;  but  am  in- 
tensely rational  and  orderly,  and  have  resolutely  begun  to  set 
the  world  to  rights. 


PRINCIPLES  OF  ART.  7 

graceful  instead  of  coarse  form;  and  by  long 
acquaintance  with  the  best  things,  to  discern 
quickly  what  is  fine  from  what  is  common  —  so 
fiar  acquired  taste  is  an  honorable  faculty,  and 
it  is  true  praise  of  anything  to  say  it  is  "  in  good 
taste."  But,*  so  far  as  this  higher  education  has 
'^  a  tendency  to  narrow  the  sympathies  and  harden 
the  heart,  diminishing  the  interest  of  all  beautiful 
things  by  familiarity,  until  even  what  is  best  can 
hardly  please,  and  what  is  brightest  hardly  enter- 
tain,—  so  far  as  it  fosters  pride,  and  leads  men 
to  found  the  pleasure  they  take  in  anything,  not 
on  the  worthiness  of  the  thing,  but  on  the  degree 
in  which  it  indicates  some  greatness  of  their 
own,  (as  people  build  marble  porticoes,  and  inlay 
marble  floors,  not  so  much  because  they  like  the 
colors  of  marble,  or  find  it  pleasant  to  the  foot, 
as  because  such  porches  and  floors  are  costly, 

1  Nobody  need  begin  this  second  volume  sentence  unless 
they  are  breathed  like  the  Graeme:  — 

"  Right  up  Ben  Ledi  could  he  press, 
And  not  a  sob  his  toil  confess." 


8  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

and  separated  in  all  human  eyes  from  plain  en- 
trances of  stone  and  timber) ;  —  so  far  as  it  leads 
people  to  prefer  gracefulness  of  dress,  manner, 
and  aspect,  to  value  of  substance  and  heart, 
liking  a  well-^a/^  thing  better  than  a  true  thing, 
and  a  well-trained  manner  better  than  a  sincere 
one,  and  a  delicately- formed  face  better  than  a 
good-natured  one,  —  and  in  all  other  ways  and 
things  setting  custom  and  semblance  above  ever- 
lasting truth ;  —  so  far,  finally,  as  it  induces  a 
sense  of  inherent  distinction  between  class  and 
class,  and  causes  everything  to  be  more  or  less 
despised  which  has  no  social  rank,  so  that  the 
affection,  pleasure,  and  grief  of  a  clown  are 
looked  upon  as  of  no  interest  compared  with  the 
affection  and  grief  of  a  well-bred  man; — just  so 
far,  in  all  these  several  ways,  the  feeling  induced 
by  what  is  called  "  a  liberal  education  "  is  utterly 
adverse  to  the  understanding  of  noble  art. 

7.   He  who  habituates  himself  in  his  daily  life 
to  seek  for  the  stern  facts  in  whatever  he  hears 


PRINCIPLES   OF  ART.  9 

or  sees,  will  have  these  facts  again  brought  before 
him  by  the  involuntary  imaginative  power,  in 
their  noblest  associations ;  and  he  who  seeks  for 
frivolities  and  fallacies,  will  have  frivolities  and 
fallacies  again  presented  to  him  in  his  dreams.^ 

8.  All  the  histories  of  the  Bible  are  yet  waiting 
to  be  painted.  Moses  has  never  been  painted ; 
Elijah  never;  David  never  (except  as  a  mere 
ruddy  stripling);  Deborah  never;  Gideon  never; 
Isaiah  never.^  What  single  example  does  the 
reader  remember  of  painting  which  suggested  so 
much  as  the  faintest  shadow  of   their   deeds? 

*  Veiy  good.  Few  people  have  any  idea  how  much  more 
important  the  government  of  the  mind  is,  than  the  force  of  its 
exertion.  Nearly  all  the  world  flog  their  horses,  without  ever 
looking  where  they  are  going. 

2 1  knew  nothing,  when  I  wrote  this  passage,  of  Luini, 
Filippo  Lippi,  or  Sandro  Botticelli ;  and  had  not  capacity  to 
enter  into  the  deeper  feelings,  even  of  the  men  whom  I  was 
chiefly  studying,  —  Tintoret  and  Era  Angelico.  But  the 
British  public  is  at  present  as  little  acquainted  with  the  greater 
Florentines  as  I  was  then,  and  the  passage,  for  them,  remains 
true. 


lO  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

Strong  men  in  armor,  or  aged  men  with  flowing 
beards,  he  may  remember,  who,  when  he  looked 
at  his  Louvre  or  Uffizi  catalogue,  he  found  were 
intended  to  stand  for  David,  or  Moses.  But 
does  he  suppose  that,  if  these  pictures  had  sug- 
gested to  him  the  feeblest  image  of  the  presence 
of  such  men,  he  would  have  passed  on,  as  he 
assuredly  did,  to  the  next  picture,  representing, 
doubtless,  Diana  and  Actaeon,  or  Cupid  and  the 
Graces,  or  a  gambling  quarrel  in  a  pothouse  — 
with  no  sense  of  pain  or  surprise?  Let  him 
meditate  over  the  matter,  and  he  will  find  ulti- 
mately that  what  I  say  is  true,  and  that  religious 
art  at  once  complete  and  sincere  never  yet  has 
existed. 


SECTION   II. 

POWER  AND  OFHCE   OF  IMAGINATION. 

9.  What  are  the  legitimate  uses  of  the  imagi- 
nation, —  that  is  to  say,  of  the  power  of  perceiv- 
ing, or  conceiving  with  the  mind,  things  which 
cannot  be  perceived  by  the  senses  ?  Its  first  and 
noblest  use  is,*  to  enable  us  to  bring  sensibly  to 
our  sight  the  things  which  are  recorded  as  be- 
longing to  our  future  state,  or  invisibly  surround- 
ing us  in  this.  It  is  given  us,  that  we  may 
imagine  the  cloud  of  witnesses,  in  heaven,  and 
earth,  and  sea,  as  if  they  were  now  present, — 

1 1  should  be  glad  if  the  reader  who  is  interested  in  the 
question  here  raised,  would  read,  as  illustrative  of  the  subse- 
quent statement,  the  account  of  Tintoret's  "  Paradise,"  in  the 
close  of  my  Oxford  lecture  on  Michael  Angelo  and  Tintoret, 
which  I  have  printed  separately  to  make  it  generally  accessi- 
ble. 

II 


12  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

the  souls  of  the  righteous  waiting  for  us;  that 
we  may  conceive  the  great  army  of  the  inhabit- 
ants of  heaven,  and  discover  among  them  those 
whom  we  most  desire  to  be  with  forever;  that 
we  may  be  able  to  vision  forth  the  ministry  of 
angels  beside  us,  and  see  the  chariots  of  fire  on 
the  mountains  that  gird  us  round ;  but,  above 
all,  to  call  up  the  scenes  and  facts  in  which  we 
are  commanded  to  believe,  and  be  present,  as 
if  in  the  body,  at  every  recorded  event  of  the 
history  of  the  Redeemer.  Its  second  and  ordi- 
nary use  is,  to  empower  us  to  traverse  the  scenes 
of  all  other  history,  and  to  force  the  facts  to  be- 
come again  visible,  so  as  to  make  upon  us  the 
same  impression  which  they  would  have  made 
if  we  had  witnessed  them;  and,  in  the  minor 
necessities  of  life,  to  enable  us,  out  of  any  pres- 
ent good,  to  gather  the  utmost  measure  of  en- 
joyment, by  investing  it  with  happy  associations, 
and,  in  any  present  evil,  to  lighten  it,  by  sum- 
moning back  the  images  of  other  hours ;  and 
also   to  give  to  all  mental  truths  some  visible 


POWER  AND   OFFICE   OF  IMAGINATION.    13 

type,  in  allegory,  simile,  or  personification,  which 
shall  most  deeply  enforce  them;  and  finally, 
when  the  mind  is  utterly  outwearied,  to  refi-esh 
it  with  such  innocent  play  as  shall  be  most  in 
harmony  with  the  suggestive  voices  of  natural 
things,  permitting  it  to  possess  living  compan- 
ionship, instead  of  silent  beauty,  and  create  for 
itself  fairies  in  the  grass,  and  naiads  in  the  wave. 

10.  Yet,  because  we  thus  reverence  the  power 
and  art  of  imagination,  let  none  of  us  despise 
the  power  and  art  of  memory. 

Let  the  reader  consider  seriously  what  he 
would  give  at  any  moment  to  have  the  power  of 
arresting  the  fairest  scenes,  those  which  so  often 
rise  before  him  only  to  vanish ;  to  stay  the  cloud 
in  its  fading,  the  leaf  in  its  trembling,  and  the 
shadows  in  their  changing ;  to  bid  the  fitful 
foam  be  fixed  upon  the  river,  and  the  ripples 
be  everlasting  upon  the  lake ;  and  then  to  bear 
away  with  him  no  darkness  or  feeble  sun-stain, 
(though  even  that  is  beautiful,)  but  a  counter- 


14  FJiONDES  AGRESTES. 

feit  which  should  seem  no  counterfeit — the  true 
and  perfect  image  of  life  indeed.  Or  rather, 
(for  the  full  majesty  of  such  a  power  is  not  thus 
sufficiently  expressed,)  let  him  consider  that  it 
would  be  in  effect  nothing  less  than  a  capacity 
of  transporting  himself  at  any  moment  into  any 
scene  —  a  gift  as  great  as  can  be  possessed  by 
a  disembodied  spirit;  and  suppose,  also,  this 
necromancy  embracing  not  only  the  present  but 
the  past,  and  enabling  us  seemingly  to  enter 
into  the  very  bodily  presence  of  men  long  since 
gathered  to  the  dust;  to  behold  them  in  act  as 
they  lived ;  but,  with  greater  privilege  than  ever 
was  granted  to  the  companions  of  those  transient 
acts  of  Hfe,  to  see  them  fastened  at  our  will  in 
the  gesture  and  expression  of  an  instant,  and 
stayed  on  the  eve  of  some  great  deed,  in  im- 
mortality of  burning  purpose.  —  Conceive,  so 
far  as  is  possible,  such  power  as  this,  and  then 
say  whether  the  art  which  conferred  it  is  to  be 
spoken  lightly  of,  or  whether  we  should  not 
rather    reverence,  as  half-divine,  a   gift    which 


\f. 


POWER  AND   OFFICE   OF  IMAGINATION.    15 

would  go  so  far  as  to  raise  us  into  the  rank,  and 
invest  us  with  the  felicities,  of  angels.* 


/    II.  I 


believe  the  first  test  of  a  truly  great 
man  is  his  humility.  I  do  not  mean  by  humility, 
doubt  of  his  own  power,  or  hesitation  of  speak- 
ing his  opinions ;  but  a  right  understanding  of 
the  relation  between  what  he  can  do  and  say, 
and  the  rest  of  the  world's  sayings  and  doings. 
All  great  men  not  only  know  their  business,  but 
usually  know  that  they  know  it;  and  are  not 
only  right  in  their  main  opinions,  but  they 
usually  know  that  they  are  right  in  them ;  only 
they  do  not  think  much  of  themselves  on  that 
account.  Amolfo  knows  he  can  build  a  good 
dome  at  Florence ;  Albert  Durer  writes  calmly 
to  one  who  has  found  fault  with  his  work,  —  "It 
cannot  be  better  done ; "  Sir  Isaac  Newton 
knows  that  he  has  worked  out  a  problem  or 
two  that    would    have    puzzled    anybody   else; 

1  Passage  written  in  opposition  to  the  vulgar  notion  that 
the  "  mere  imitation "  of  Nature  is  easy,  and  useless. 


l6  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

only  they  do  not  expect  their  fellow-men,  there- 
fore, to  fall  down  and  worship  them.  They 
have  a  curious  under-sense  of  powerlessness, 
feeling  that  the  greatness  is  not  in  them,  but 
through  them  —  that  they  could  not  do  or  be 
anything  else  than  God  made  them ;  and  they 
see  something  divine  and  God-made  in  every 
other  man  they  meet,  and  are  endlessly,  fool- 
ishly, incredibly  merciful. 

^         — 

12.  As  far  as  I  can  observe,  it  is  a  constant 
law,  that  the  greatest  men,  whether  poets  or 
historians,  live  entirely  in  their  own  age,  and  the 
greatest  fruits  of  their  work  are  gathered  out  of 
their  own  age.  Dante  paints  Italy  in  the  thir- 
teenth century;  Chaucer,  England  in  the  four- 
teenth ;  Masaccio,  Florence  in  the  fifteenth ; 
Tintoret,  Venice  in  the  sixteenth;  all  of  them 
utterly  regardless  of  anachronism  and  minor 
error  of  every  kind,  but  getting  always  vital 
truth  out  of  the  vital  present.  If  it  be  said 
that   Shakespeare  wrote  perfect  historical  plays 


POWER  AND   OFFICE   OF  IMAGINATION.    17 

on  subjects  belonging  to  the  preceding  centuries, 
I  answer  that  they  are  perfect  plays,  just  be- 
cause there  is  no  care  about  centuries  in  them, 
but  a  life  which  all  men  recognize  for  the  human 
life  of  all  time  —  and  this  it  is,  not  because 
Shakespeare  sought  to  give  universal  truth,  but 
because  painting,  honestly  and  completely,  from 
the  men  about  him,  he  painted  that  human 
nature  which  is  indeed  constant  enough,  —  a 
rogue  in  the  fifteenth  century  being  at  heart 
what  a  rogue  is  in  the  nineteenth,  and  was  in 
the  twelfth ;  and  an  honest  or  knightly  man  be- 
ing in  like  manner  very  similar  to  other  such  at 
any  other  time.  And  the  work  of  these  great 
idealists  is,  therefore,  always  universal ;  not  be- 
cause it  is  not  portrait^  but  because  it  is  complete 
portrait,  down  to  the  heart,  which  is  the  same 
in  all  ages;  and  the  work  of  the  mean  idealists 
is  not  universal,  not  because  it  is  portrait,  but 
because  it  is  half  portrait  —  of  the  outside,  the 
manners  and  the  dress,  not  of  the  heart.  Thus 
Tintoret  and  Shakespeare  paint,  both  of  them, 


l8  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

simply  Venetian  and  English  nature,  as  they 
saw  it  in  their  time,  down  to  the  root;  and  it 
does  for  all  time ;  but  as  for  any  care  to  cast 
themselves  into  the  particular  ways  and  tones  of 
thought,  or  custom,  of  past  time  in  their  histori- 
cal work,  you  will  find  it  in  neither  of  them,^  nor 
in  any  other  perfectly  great  man  that  I  know  of. 

13.  I  think  it  probable  that  many  readers 
may  be  surprised  at  my  calling  Scott  the  great 
representative  of  the  mind  of  the  age  of  litera- 
ture. Those  who  can  perceive  the  intense  pene- 
trative depth  of  Wordsworth,  and  the  exquisite 
finish  and  melodious  power  of  Tennyson,  may 
be  offended  at  my  placing  in  higher  rank  that 

1  What  vestige  of  Egyptian  character  is  there,  for  instance, 
in  Cleopatra  ?  —  of  Athenian  in  Theseus  or  Timon  ?  —  of  old 
English  in  Imogen  or  Cordelia  ?  —  of  old  Scottish  in  Mac- 
beth ?  —  or  even  of  mediaeval  Italian  in  Petruchio,  the  Mer- 
chant of  Venice,  or  Desdemona  ?  And  the  Roman  plays 
appear  definitely  Roman  only  because  the  strength  of  Rome 
was  the  eternal  strength  of  the  world,  —  pure  family  life,  sus- 
tained by  agriculture,  and  defended  by  simple  and  fearless 
iQanhpod. 


POWER  AND  OFFICE  OF  IMAGINATION.     19 

poetry  of  careless  glance  and  reckless  rhyme  in 
which  Scott  poured  out  the  fancies  of  his  youth ; 
and  those  who  are  familiar  with  the  subtle  anal- 
ysis of  the  French  novelists,  or  who  have  in 
any  wise  submitted  themselves  to  the  influence 
of  German  philosophy,  may  be  equally  indig- 
nant at  my  ascribing  a  principality  to  Scott 
among  the  literary  men  of  Europe,  in  an  age 
which  has  produced  De  Balzac,  and  Goethe.^ 

But  the  mass  of  sentimental  literature  con- 
cerned with  the  analysis  and  description  of 
emotion,  headed  by  the  poetry  of  Byron,  is  al- 
together of  lower  rank  than  the  literature  which 
merely  describes  what  it  saw.  The  true  seer 
feels  as  intensely  as  any  one  else  \  but  he  does 
not  much  describe  his  feelings.  He  tells  you 
whom  he  met,  and  what  they  said;  leaves  you 

1  I  knew  nothing  of  Goethe  when  I  put  him  with  Balzac  ; 
but  the  intolerable  dulness  which  encumbers  the  depth  of 
Wilhelm  Meister,  and  the  cruel  reserve  which  conceals  from 
all  but  the  intensest  readers  the  meaning  of  Faust,  have  made 
him,  in  a  great  degree,  an  evil  influence  in  European  litera- 
tore ;  and  Evil  is  always  second-rate. 


20  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

to  make  out,  from  that,  what  they  feel,  and  what 
he  feels,  but  goes  into  little  detail.  And,  gener- 
ally speaking,  pathetic  writing  and  careful  expla- 
nation of  passion  are  quite  easy,  compared  with 
this  plain  recording  of  what  people  said,  and 
did ;  or  with  the  right  invention  of  what  they 
are  likely  to  say  and  do ;  for  this  reason,  that  to 
invent  a  story,  or  admirably  and  thoroughly  tell 
any  part  of  a  story,  it  is  necessary  to  grasp  the 
entire  mind  of  every  personage  concerned  in  it, 
and  know  precisely  how  they  would  be  affected 
by  what  happens ;  which  to  do,  requires  a  colos- 
sal intellect ;  but  to  describe  a  separate  emo- 
tion dehcately,  it  is  only  needed  that  one 
should  feel  it  oneself;  and  thousands  of  peo- 
ple are  capable  of  feeling  this  or  that  noble 
emotion,  for  one  who  is  able  to  enter  into  all 
the  feelings  of  somebody  sitting  on  the  other 
side  of  the  table.  Even,  therefore,  where  this 
sentimental  literature  is  first  rate,  as  in  passages 
of  Byron,  Tennyson,  and  Keats,  it  ought  not  to 
be  ranked  so  high  as  the  creative;  and  though 


POWER  AND   OFFICE   OF  IMAGINATION.   21 

perfection  even  in  narrow  fields  is  perhaps  as 
rare  as  in  the  wider,  and  it  may  be  as  long 
before  we  have  another  "  In  Memoriam "  as 
another  "Guy  Mannering,"  I  unhesitatingly  re- 
ceive as  a  greater  manifestation  of  power,  the 
right  invention  of  a  few  sentences  spoken  by 
Pleydell  and  Mannering  across  their  supper- 
table,  than  the  most  tender  and  passionate 
melodies  of  the  self- examining  verse. 

14.  Fancy  plays  like  a  squirrel  in  its  circular 
prison,  and  is  happy ;  but  Imagination  is  a  pil- 
grim on  the  earth  —  and  her  home  is  in  heaven. 
Shut  her  from  the  fields  of  the  celestial  moun- 
tains, bear  her  from  breathing  their  lofty,  sun- 
warmed  air;  and  we  may  as  well  turn  upon  her 
the  last  bolt  of  the  Tower  of  Famine,  and  give 
the  keys  to  the  keeping  of  the  wildest  surge  that 
washes  Capraja  and  Gorgona.' 

1 1  leave  this  passage,  as  my  friend  has  chosen  it ;  but  it  is 
unintelligible  without  the  contexts,  which  show  how  all  the 
emotions  described  in  the  preceding  passages  of  this  section, 
are  founded  on  trust  in  the  beneficence  and  rule  of  an  Om- 
nipotent Spirit. 


22  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

15.  In  the  highest  poetry,  there  is  no  word 
so  familiar,  but  a  great  man  will  bring  good  out 
of  it,  or  rather,  it  will  bring  good  to  him,  and 
answer  some  end  for  which  no  other  word 
would  have  done  equally  well.  A  common  per- 
son, for  instance,  would  be  mightily  puzzled  to 
apply  the  word  "  whelp  "  to  any  one,  with  a  view 
of  flattering  him.  There  is  a  certain  freshness 
and  energy  in  the  term,  which  gives  it  agree- 
ableness,  but  it  seems  difficult,  at  first  hearing 
it,  to  use  it  complimentarily.  If  the  person 
spoken  of  be  a  prince,  the  difficulty  seems  in- 
creased; and  when  farther  he  is  at  one  and 
the  same  moment  to  be  called  a  "  whelp  "  and 
contemplated  as  a  hero,  it  seems  that  a  com- 
mon idealist  might  well  be  brought  to  a  pause  ! 
But  hear  Shakespeare  do  it :  — 

"  Awake  his  warlike  spirit, 
And,  your  great  uncle's,  Edward  the  Black  Prince, 
Who  on  the  French  ground  played  a  tragedy, 
Making  defeat  on  the  full  power  of  France, 
While  his  most  mighty  father  on  a  hill 
Stood  smiling,  to  behold  his  lion's  whelp 
Forage  in  blood  of  French  nobility." 


POWER  AND   OFFICE   OF  IMAGINATION.    23 

16.  Although  in  all  lovely  nature  there  is, 
first,  an  excellent  degree  of  simple  beauty,  ad- 
dressed to  the  eye  alone,  yet  often  what  im- 
presses us  most  will  form  but  a  very  small 
portion  of  that  visible  beauty.  That  beauty 
may,  for  instance,  be  composed  of  lovely 
flowers,  and  glittering  streams,  and  blue  sky 
and  white  clouds ;  and  yet  the  thing  that  im- 
presses us  most,  and  which  we  should  be  sorri- 
est to  lose,  may  be  a  thin  gray  film  on  the 
extreme  horizon,  not  so  large,  in  the  space  of 
the  scene  it  occupies,  as  a  piece  of  gossamer 
on  a  near-at-hand  bush,  nor  in  any  wise  pret- 
tier to  the  eye  than  the  gossamer;  but  because 
the  gossamer  is  known  by  us  for  a  little  bit  of 
spider's  work,  and  the  other  gray  film  is  known 
to  mean  a  mountain  ten  thousand  feet  high,  in- 
habited by  a  race  of  noble  mountaineers,  we 
are  solemnly  impressed  by  the  aspect  of  it, 
and  yet  all  the  while  the  thoughts  and  knowl- 
edge which  cause  us  to  receive  this  impression 
are  so  obscure  that  we  are  not  conscious  of  them. 


24  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

17.  Examine  the  nature  of  your  own  emo- 
tion, (if  you  feel  it,)  at  the  sight  of  the  Alps ; 
and  you  find  all  the  brightness  of  that  emotion 
hanging,  like  dew  on  a  gossamer,  on  a  curious 
web  of  subtle  fancy  and  imperfect  knowledge. 
First  you  have  a  vague  idea  of  its  size,  coupled 
with  wonder  at  the  work  of  the  great  Builder 
of  its  walls  and  foundations  ;  then  an  appre- 
hension of  its  eternity,  a  pathetic  sense  of  its 
perpetualness,  and  your  own  transientness,  as 
of  the  grass  upon  its  side;  —  then,  and  in  very 
sadness,  a  sense  of  strange  companionship  with 
past  generations,  in  seeing  what  they  saw. 
They  did  not  see  the  clouds  that  are  floating 
over  your  head,  nor  the  cottage  wall  on  the 
other  side  of  the  field,  nor  the  road  by  which 
you  are  travelling.  But  they  saw  that.  The 
wall  of  granite  in  the  heavens  was  the  same  to 
them  as  to  you.  They  have  ceased  to  look 
upon  it  ;  you  will  soon  cease  to  look  also,  and 
the  granite  wall  will  be  for  others.  Then, 
mingled  with   these  more   solemn  imaginations, 


POWER  AND   OFFICE   OF  IMAGINATION.    25 

come  the  understandings  of  the  gifts  and  glo- 
ries of  the  Alp  ;  —  the  fancying  forth  of  all 
the  fountains  that  well  from  its  rocky  walls, 
and  strong  rivers  that  are  bom  out  of  its  ice, 
and  of  all  the  pleasant  valleys  that  wind  be- 
tween its  cliffs,  and  all  the  chalets  that  gleam 
among  its  clouds,  and  happy  farmsteads  couched 
upon  its  pastures ;  while,  together  with  the 
thoughts  of  these,  rise  strange  sympathies  with 
all  the  unknown  of  human  life,  and  happiness, 
and  death,  signified  by  that  narrow  white  flame 
of  the  everlasting  snow,  seen  so  far  in  the 
morning  sky.  These  images,  and  far  more 
than  these,  lie  at  the  root  of  the  emotion 
which  you  feel  at  the  sight  of  the  Alps.  You 
may  not  trace  them  in  your  heart,  for  there  is 
a  great  deal  more  in  your  heart,  both  of  evil 
and  good,  than  you  can  ever  trace ;  but  they 
stir  you  and  quicken  you  for  all  that.  Assuredly, 
so  far  as  you  feel  more  at  beholding  the  snowy 
mountain  than  any  other  object  of  the  same 
sweet  silvery  gray,  these  are  the  kind  of  images 


26  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

which  cause  you  to  do  so  ;  and  observe,  these 
are  nothing  more  than  a  greater  apprehension 
of  the  facts  of  the  thing.  We  call  the  power 
"  Imagination,"  because  it  imagines  or  conceives ; 
but  it  is  only  noble  imagination,  if  it  imagines 
or  conceives  the  truth.  And  according  to  the 
degree  of  knowledge  possessed,  and  of  sensi- 
bility to  the  pathetic  or  impressive  character 
of  the  things  known,  will  be  the  degree  of  this 
imaginative  delight. 

1 8.  So  natural  is  it  to  the  human  heart  to 
fix  itself  in  hope  rather  than  in  present  posses- 
sion, and  so  subtle  is  the  charm  which  the  im- 
agination casts  over  what  is  distant  or  denied, 
that  there  is  often  a  more  touching  power  in 
the  scenes  which  contain  far-away  promises  of 
something  greater  than  themselves,  than  in  those 
which  exhaust  the  treasures  and  powers  of  na- 
ture in  an  unconquerable  and  excellent  glory, 
leaving  nothing  more  to  be  by  fancy  pictured 
or  pursued.     I  do  not  know  that  there  is  a  dis- 


POWER  AND   OFFICE   OF  IMAGINATION.    27 

trict  in  the  world  more  calculated  to  illustrate 
this  power  of  the  expectant  imagination  than 
that  which  surrounds  the  city  of  Fribourg  in 
Switzerland,  extending  from  it  towards  Berne. 
It  is  of  gray  sandstone,  considerably  elevated, 
but  presenting  no  object  of  striking  interest  to 
the  passing  traveller;  so  that  as  it  is  generally 
seen  in  the  course  of  a  hasty  journey  from  the 
Bernese  Alps  to  those  of  Savoy,  it  is  rarely  re- 
garded with  any  other  sensation  than  that  of 
weariness,  all  the  more  painful  because  accom- 
panied with  reaction  from  the  high  excitement 
caused  by  the  splendor  of  the  Bernese  Ober- 
land.  The  traveller  —  foot-sore,  feverish,  and 
satiated  with  glacier  and  precipice  —  lies  back 
in  the  comer  of  the  diligence,  perceiving  little 
more  than  that  the  road  is  winding  and  hilly, 
and  the  country  through  which  it  passes,  culti- 
vated and  tame.  Let  him,  however,  only  do 
this  tame  country  the  justice  of  staying  in  it 
a  few  days,  until  his  mind  has  recovered  its 
tone,  and  take  one  or  two  long  walks  through 


28  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

its  fields,  and  he  will  have  other  thoughts  of  it. 
It  is,  as  I  said,  an  undulating  district  of  gray 
sandstone,  never  attaining  any  considerable 
height,  but  having  enough  of  the  mountain 
spirit  to  throw  itself  into  continual  succession 
of  bold  slope  and  dale ;  elevated,  also,  just  far 
enough  above  the  sea  to  render  the  pine  a 
frequent  forest  tree  along  its  irregular  ridges. 
Through  this  elevated  tract  the  river  cuts  its 
way  in  a  ravine  some  five  or  six  hundred  feet 
in  depth,  which  winds  for  leagues  between  the 
gentle  hills,  unthought  of  until  its  edge  is  ap- 
proached ;  and  then,  suddenly,  through  the 
boughs  of  the  firs,  the  eye  perceives,  beneath, 
the  green  and  gliding  stream,  and  the  broad 
walls  of  sandstone  cliff  that  form  its  banks ; 
hollowed  out  where  the  river  leans  against 
them,  at  its  turns,  into  perilous  overhanging; 
and,  pn  the  other  shore,  at  the  same  spots, 
leaving  little  breadths  of  meadow  between  them 
and  the  water,  half  overgrown  with  thicket, 
deserted  in  their    sweetness,   inaccessible   from 


POWER  AND   OFFICE   OF  IMAGINATION.    29 

above,  and  rarely  visited  by  any  curious  wan- 
derers along  the  hardly  traceable  footpath  which 
struggles  for  existence  beneath  the  rocks.  And 
there  the  river  ripples  and  eddies  and  murmurs 
in  an  outer  solitude.  It  is  passing  through  a 
thickly  peopled  country ;  but  never  was  a  stream 
so  lonely.  The  feeblest  and  most  far-away  tor- 
rent among  the  high  hills  has  its  companions ; 
the  goats  browse  beside  it;  and  the  traveller 
drinks  from  it,  and  passes  over  it  with  his 
staff;  and  the  peasant  traces  a  new  channel 
for  it  down  to  his  mill-wheel.  But  this  stream 
has  no  companions;  it  flows  on  in  an  inflnite 
seclusion,  not  secret,  nor  threatening,  but  a 
quietness  of  sweet  daylight  and  open  air  — 
a  broad  space  of  tender  and  deep  desolate- 
ness,  drooped  into  repose  out  of  the  midst  of 
human  labor  and  life ;  the  waves  plashing  lowly, 
with  none  to  hear  them  ;  and  the  wild  birds 
building  in  the  boughs,  with  none  to  fray  them 
away ;  and  the  soft,  fragrant  herbs  rising  and 
breathing  and  fading,  with  no  hand  to  gather 


30  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

them;  —  and  yet  all  bright  and  bare  to  the 
clouds  above,  and  to  the  fresh  fall  of  the  pass- 
ing sunshine  and  pure  rain.  But  above  the 
brows  of  these  scarped  chfTs,  all  is  in  an  in- 
stant changed.  A  few  steps  only  beyond  the 
firs  that  stretch  their  branches,  angular,  and 
wild,  and  white,  Uke  forks  of  lightning,  into 
the  air  of  the  ravine,  —  and  we  are  in  an 
arable  country  of  the  most  perfect  richness; 
the  swathes  of  its  com  glowing  and  burning 
from  field  to  field :  its  pretty  hamlets  all  vivid 
with  fruitful  orchards,  and  flowery  garden,  and 
goodly  with  steep-roofed  storehouse  and  bam; 
its  well-kept,  hard,  park-like  roads  rising  and 
falling  from  hillside  to  hillside,  or  disappearing 
among  brown  banks  of  moss,  and  thickets  of 
the  wild  raspberry  and  rose,  or  gleaming  through 
lines  of  tall  trees,  half  glade,  half  avenue,  where 
the  gate  opens,  or  the  gateless  path  turns 
trustedly  aside,  unhindered,  into  the  garden  of 
some  statelier  house,  surrounded  in  rural  pride 
with   its    golden    hives,    and    carved    granaries, 


POWER  AND  OFFICE  OF  IMAGINATION.    31 

and  irregular  domain  of  latticed  and  esoaliered 
cottages,  gladdening  to  look  upon  in  their  deli- 
cate homeliness  —  delicate,  yet  in  some  sort, 
rude;  not  like  our  English  homes  —  trim,  labo- 
rious, formal,  irreproachable  in  comfort  —  but 
wth  a  peculiar  carelessness  and  largeness  in 
all  their  detail,  harmonizing  with  the  outlawed 
loveliness  of  their  country.  For  there  is  an 
untamed  strength  even  in  all  that  soft  and 
habitable  land.  It  is  indeed  gilded  with  com, 
and  fragrant  with  deep  grass,  but  it  is  not  sub- 
dued to  the  plough  or  to  the  scythe.  It  gives 
at  its  own  free  will;  it  seems  to  have  nothing 
wrested  from  it,  nor  conquered  in  it.  It  is 
not  redeemed  from  desertness,  but  unrestrained 
in  fruitfulness,  —  a  generous  land,  bright  with 
capricious  plenty,  and  laughing  from  vale  to 
vale  in  fitful  fulness,  kind  and  wild.  Nor  this 
without  some  sterner  element  mingled  in  the 
heart  of  it.  /  For,  along  all  its  ridges  stand  the 
/  dark   masses  of  innumerable   pines,^  taking   no 

1  Almost  the  only  pleasure  I  haYe,  myself,  in  re-reading 


32  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

\  part  in  its   gladness;    asserting   themselves    for- 
;    ever  as   fixed   shadows,  not   to  be   pierced  or 
■    banished  even  in   the  intensest   sunlight;   fallen 
\    flakes    and    fragments    of  the    night,    stayed  in 
I     their  solemn   squares   in   the    midst   of  all   the 
rosy  bendings  of  the   orchard  boughs   and  yel- 
low effulgence  of  the  harvest,  and  tracing  them- 
I      selves  in   black   network  and   motionless  fringes 
I      against  the  blanched  blue  of  the  horizon  in  its 
i     saintly  clearness.     And  yet  they  do  not  sadden 
I     the  landscape,  but  seem  to  have  been  set  there 

I     chiefly  to  show  how   bright    everything    else   is 

i 

{     round  them;   and   all  the   clouds  look  of  pure 

i  - 

■     silver,    and    ail    the    air    seems    filled    with    a 

whiter   and   more    living   sunshine,   where    they 

are   pierced  by   the  sable  points   of  the  pines; 

and    all    the    pastures    look    of    more    glowing 

green  where   they  run   up  between   the  purple 

trunks;  and  the  sweet  field   footpaths  skirt  the 

edges  of  the  forest  for  the  sake  of  its  shade, 

my  old  books,  is  my  sense  of  having  at  least  done  justice  to 
the  pine.    Compare  the  passage  in  this  book,  No.  47. 


POWER  AND   OFFICE    OF  IMAGINATION.    33 

sloping  up  and  down  about   the   slippery  roots, 

and    losing    themselves     every   now    and    then  ' 

hopelessly    among    the    violets    and    ground-ivy  f 

and  brown  sheddings  of  the  fibrous  leaves,  and  1 

at  last   plunging  into    some   open   aisle,  where  | 

the  light  through   the  distant  stems  shows   that  ! 

there  is  a  chance  of  coming  out  again  on  the  '; 

other  side ;   and  coming  out  indeed   in  a  little  | 

while  from   the  scented  darkness  into  the  daz-  \ 

zling    air    and     marvellous     landscape,    which  f 

stretches  still  farther  and  farther  in  new  wilful-  ! 

ness   of  grove    and   garden,    until   at   last    the  / 
craggy  mountains  of  the  Simmenthal  rise  out  of 

it,  sharp  into  the  rolling  of  the  southern  clouds.  ,;; 

19.*  Although  there  are  few  districts  of 
Northern  Europe,   however    apparently   dull   or 

1  This,  and  the  following  passage,  have  nothing  to 
do  with  the  general  statements  in  the  book.  They  oc- 
cur with  reference  only  to  my  own  idios3mcrasy.  I  was 
much  surprised  when  I  found  first  how  individual  it  was, 
by  a  Pre-Raphaelite  painter's  declaring  a  piece  of  un- 
wholesome reedy  fen  to  be  more  beautiful  than  Benvenue. 


34  FRONDES  AG  RE  ST ES. 

tame,  in  which  I  cannot  find  pleasure ;  though 
the  whole  of  Northern  France  (except  Cham- 
pagne), dull  as  it  seems  to  most  travellers,  is  to 
me  a  perpetual  paradise ;  and,  putting  Lincoln- 
shire, Leicestershire,  and  one  or  two  such  other 
perfectly  flat  districts  aside,  there  is  not  an 
English  county  which  I  should  -not  find  en- 
tertainment in  exploring  the  cross-roads  of, 
foot  by  foot,  —  yet  all  my  best  enjoyment 
would  be  owing  to  the  imagination  of  the 
hills,  coloring  with  their  far-away  memories 
every  lowland  stone  and  herb.  The  pleas- 
ant French  coteau,  green  in  the  sunshine, 
delights  me  either  by  what  real  mountain  char- 
acter it  has  in  itself,  (for  in  extent  and 
succession  of  promontory,  the  flanks  of  the 
French  valleys  have  quite  the  sublimity  of 
true  mountain  distances,)  or  by  its  broken 
ground  .and  rugged  steps  among  the  vines, 
and  rise  of  the  leafage  above  against  the 
blue  sky,  as  it  might  rise  at  Vevay  or  Como. 
There    is    not    a    wave    of    the    Seine,   but    is 


POWER  AND   OFFICE   OF  IMAGINATION.    35 

associated  in  my  mind  with  the  first  rise  of 
the  sandstones  and  forest  pines  of  Fontaine- 
bleau ;  and  with  the  hope  of  the  Alps,  as 
one  leaves  Paris,  with  the  horses'  heads  to 
the  southwest,  the  morning  sun  flashing  on 
the  bright  waves  at  Charenton.  If  there  be 
no  hope  or  association  of  this  kind,  and  if 
I  cannot  deceive  myself  into  fancying  that 
perhaps  at  the  next  rise  of  the  road  there 
may  be  the  film  of  a  blue  hill  in  the  gleam 
of  sky  at  the  horizon,  the  landscape,  however 
beautiful,  produces  in  me  even  a  kind  of  sick- 
ness and  pain ;  and  the  whole  view  from 
Richmond  Hill  or  Windsor  Terrace,  —  nay, 
the  gardens  of  Alcinous,  with  their  perpetual 
summer — or  of  the  Hesperides,  (if  they  were 
flat,  and  not  close  to  Atlas,)  golden  apples  and 
all,  I  would  give  away  in  an  instant,  for  one 
mossy  granite  stone  a  foot  broad,  and  two 
leaves  of  lady  fern. 

20.   I    cannot    find    words    to    express    the 


36  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

intense  pleasure  I  have  always  in  first  finding 
myself,  after  some  prolonged  stay  in  England, 
at  the  foot  of  the  old  tower  of  Calais  Church. 
The  large  neglect,  the  noble  unsightliness  of 
it;  the  record  of  its  years  written  so  visibly, 
yet  without  sign  of  weakness  or  decay;  its 
stern  wasteness  and  gloom,  eaten  away  by  the 
Channel  winds,  and  overgrown  with  the  bitter 
sea  grasses ;  its  slates  and  tiles  all  shaken  and 
rent,  and  yet  not  faUing;  its  desert  of  brick- 
work, full  of  bolts,  and  holes,  and  ugly  fissures, 
and  yet  strong,  like  a  bare  brown  rock;  its 
carelessness  of  what  any  one  thinks  or  feels 
about  it,  putting  forth  no  claim,  having  no 
beauty,  nor  desirableness,  pride,  nor  grace ; 
yet  neither  asking  for  pity;  not,  as  ruins  are, 
useless  and  piteous,  feebly  or  fondly  garrulous 
of  better  days;  but,  useful  still,  going  through 
its  own'  daily  work,  —  as  some  old  fisherman, 
beaten  gray  by  storm,  yet  drawing  his  daily 
nets :  so  it  stands,  with  no  complaint  about 
its   past   youth,   in   blanched   and   meagre   mas- 


POWER  AND   OFFICE   OF  IMAGINATION.    37 

siveness  and  serviceableness,  gathering  human 
souls  together  underneath  it;  the  sound  of 
its  bells  for  prayer  still  rolling  through  its 
rents;  and  the  gray  peak  of  it  seen  far  across 
the  sea,  principal  of  the  three  that  rise  above 
the  waste  of  surfy  sand  and  hillocked  shore, 
— the  lighthouse  for  life,  and  the  belfry  for 
labor,   and   this  —  for   patience   and   praise. 

I  cannot  tell  the  half  of  the  strange  pleasures 
and  thoughts  that  come  about  me  at  the  sight  of 
that  old  tower ;  for,  in  some  sort,  it  is  the  epit- 
ome of  all  that  makes  the  continent  of  Europe 
interesting,  as  opposed  to  new  countries ;  and, 
above  all,  it  completely  expresses  that  agedness 
in  the  midst  of  active  life  which  binds  the  old 
and  the  new  into  harmony.  We  in  England  have 
our  new  streets,  our  new  inn,  our  green  shaven 
lawn,  and  our  piece  of  ruin  emergent  from  it  —  a 
mere  specimen  of  the  Middle  Ages  put  on  a  bit  of 
velvet  carpet,  to  be  shown ;  and  which,  but  for 
its  size,  might  as  well  be  on  a  museum  shelf  at 
once,  under  cover ;  —  but,  on  the  Continent,  the 


38  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

links  are  unbroken  between  the  past  and  present ; 
and,  in  such  use  as  they  can  serve  for,  the  gray- 
headed  wrecks  are  suffered  to  stay  with  men; 
while,  in  unbroken  line,  the  generations  of  spared 
buildings  are  seen  succeeding,  each  in  its  place. 
And  thus,  in  its  largeness,  in  its  permitted  evi- 
dence of  slow  decline,  in  its  poverty,  in  its 
absence  of  all  pretence,  of  all  show  and  care  for 
outside  aspect,  that  Calais  tower  has  an  infinite 
of  symbolism  in  it,  all  the  more  striking  because 
usually  seen  in  contrast  with  English  scenes  ex- 
pressive of  feelings  the  exact  reverse  of  these.^ 

1  My  friend  won't  write  out  the  reverse !  Our  book  is  to  be 
all  jelly,  and  no  powder,  it  seems.  Well,  I'm  very  thankful 
she  likes  the  jelly,  —  at  any  rate,  it  makes  me  sure  that  it  is 
well  made. 


SECTION   III. 

nXUSTRATTVE  :    THE    SKY. 

21.  It  is  a  strange  thing  how  little  in  general 
people  know  about  the  sky.  It  is  the  part  of 
creation  in  which  Nature  has  done  more  for  the 
sake  of  pleasing  man  —  more  for  the  sole  and 
evident  purpose  of  talking  to  him,  and  teaching 
him  —  than  in  any  other  of  her  works ;  and  it  is 
just  the  part  in  which  we  least  attend  to  her. 
There  are  not  many  of  her  other  works  in  which 
some  more  material  or  essential  purpose  than 
the  mere  pleasing  of  man  is  not  answered  by 
every  part  of  their  organization ;  but  every  essen- 
tial purpose  of  the  sky  might,  so  far  as  we  know, 
be  answered  if  once  in  three  days,  or  thereabouts, 
a  great,  ugly,  black  rain-cloud  were  brought  up 
over  the  blue,  and  everything  well  watered,  and 
so  all  left  blue  again  till  next  time,  with  perhaps 
39 


40  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

a  film  of  morning  and  evening  mist  for  dew ;  — 
and  instead  of  this,  there  is  not  a  moment  of  any 
day  of  our  hves,  when  Nature  is  not  producing 
scene  after  scene,  picture  after  picture,  glory  after 
glory,  and  working  still  upon  such  exquisite  and 
constant  principles  of  the  most  perfect  beauty, 
that  it  is  quite  certain  ^  it  is  all  done  for  us,  and 
intended  for  our  perpetual  pleasure.  And  every 
man,  wherever  placed,  however  far  from  other 
sources  of  interest  or  of  beauty,  has  this  doing 
for  him  constantly.  The  noblest  scenes  of  the 
earth  can  be  seen  and  known  but  by  few ;  it  is 
not  intended  that  man  should  live  always  in  the 
midst  of  them ;  he  injures  them  by  his  presence, 
he  ceases  to  feel  them  if  he  is  always  with  them ; 
but  the  sky  is  for  all :  bright  as  it  is,  it  is  not 

"  too  bright  nor  good 
For  human  nature's  daily  food ;  " 

1  At  least,  I  thought  so,  when  I  was  four-and-twenty.  At 
five-and-fifty,  1  fancy  that  it  is  just  possible  there  may  be  other 
creatures  in  the  universe  to  be  pleased,  or,  —  it  may  be,  —  dis- 
pleased, by  the  weather. 


ILLUSTRATIVE:    THE  SKY.  41 

it  is  fitted  in  all  its  functions  for  the  perpetual 
comfort  and  exalting  of  the  heart,  —  for  soothing 
it,  and  purifying  it  from  its  dross  and  dust. 
Sometimes  gentle,  sometimes  capricious,  some- 
times awful  —  never  the  same  for  two  moments 
together;  almost  human  in  its  passions,  almost 
spiritual  in  its  tenderness,  almost  divine  in  its 
infinity,  its  appeal  to  what  is  immortal  in  us  is 
as  distinct  as  its  ministry  of  chastisement  or  of 
blessing  to  what  is  mortal  is  essential.  And  yet 
we  never  attend  to  it,  we  never  make  it  a  subject 
of  thought,  but  as  it  has  to  do  with  our  animal 
sensations ;  we  look  upon  all  by  which  it  speaks 
to  us  more  clearly  than  to  brutes,  upon  all  which 
bears  witness  to  the  intentions  of  the  Supreme 
that  we  are  to  receive  more  firom  the  covering 
vault  than  the  light  and  the  dew  which  we  share 
with  the  weed  and  the  worm,  as  only  a  succession 
of  meaningless  and  monotonous  accident,  too 
common  and  too  vain  to  be  worthy  of  a  moment 
of  watchfulness,  or  a  glance  of  admiration.  If  in 
our  moments  of  utter  idleness  and  insipidity,  we 


42  FRONDES  AGUES TES. 

turn  to  the  sky  as  a  last  resource,  which  of  its 
phenomena  do  we  speak  of  ?  One  says,  it  has 
been  wet ;  and  another,  it  has  been  windy ;  and 
another,  it  has  been  warm.  Who  among  the 
whole  chattering  crowd  can  tell  one  of  the  forms 
and  the  precipices  of  the  chain  of  tall  white 
mountains  that  girded  the  horizon  at  noon  yes- 
terday? Who  saw  the  narrow  sunbeam  that 
came  out  of  the  south,  and  smote  upon  their 
summits  until  they  melted  and  mouldered  away 
in  a  dust  of  blue  rain?  Who  saw  the  dance  of 
the  dead  clouds  when  the  sunlight  left  them  last 
night,  and  the  west  wind  blew  them  before  it  like 
withered  leaves?  All  has  passed  unregretted  as 
unseen ;  or,  if  the  apathy  be  ever  shaken  off  even 
for  an  instant,  it  is  only  by  what  is  gross,  or  what 
is  extraordinary.  And  yet  it  is  not  in  the  broad 
and  fierce  manifestations  of  the  elemental  ener- 
gies, not  in  the  clash  of  the  hail,  nor  the  drift  of 
the  whirlwind,  that  the  highest  characters  of  the 
subHme  are  developed.  God  is  not  in  the  earth- 
quake, nor  in  the  fire,  but  in  the  still,  small  voice. 


ILLUSTRATIVE:    THE  SKY.  43 

They  are  but  the  blunt  and  the  low  faculties  of  ' 
our  nature,  which  can  only  be  addressed  through  | 
lamp-black  and  lightning.     It  is  in  quiet  and  j 
subdued   passages  of  unobtrusive   majesty,  the  j 
deep  and  the  calm,  and  the   perpetual;   that  ! 
which  must  be  sought  ere  it  is  seen,  and  loved  j 
ere  it  is  understood ;  things  which  the  angels 
work  out  for  us  daily,  and  yet  vary  eternally;  ! 
which  are  never  wanting,  and  never  repeated;  , 
which  are  to  be  found  always,  yet  each  found  | 
but  once ;  —  it  is  through  these  that  the  lesson 
of  devotion  is  chiefly  taught,  and  the   blessing  < 
of  beauty  given. 

22.  We  habitually  think  of  the  rain-cloud 
only  as  dark  and  gray;  not  knowing  that  we 
owe  to  it  perhaps  the  fairest,  though  not  the 
most  dazzling,  of  the  hues  of  heaven.  Often 
in  our  English  mornings,  the  rain-clouds  in 
the  dawn  form  soft,  level  fields,  which  melt 
imperceptibly  into  the  blue ;  or,  when  of  less 
extent,  gather  into  apparent  bars,  crossing  the 


44  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

sheets  of  broader  cloud  above ;  and  all  these 
bathed  throughout  in  an  unspeakable  light  of 
pure  rose-color,  and  purple,  and  amber,  and 
blue;  not  shining,  but  misty-soft;  the  barred 
masses,  when  seen  nearer,  composed  of  clus- 
ters or  tresses  of  cloud,  like  floss  silk;  look- 
ing as  if  each  knot  were  a  little  swathe  or 
sheaf  of  lighted  rain. 

23.  Aqueous  vapor  or  mist,  suspended  in 
the  atmosphere,  becomes  visible  exactly  as  dust 
does  in  the  air  of  a  room.  In  the  shadows, 
you  not  only  cannot  see  the  dust  itself,  be- 
cause unillumined,  but  you  can  see  other 
objects  through  the  dust,  without  obscurity; 
the  air  being  thus  actually  rendered  more 
transparent  by  a  deprivation  of  light.  Where 
a  sunbeam  enters,  every  particle  of  dust  be- 
comes visible,  and  a  palpable  interruption  to 
the  sight;  so  that  a  transverse  sunbeam  is  a 
real  obstacle  to  the  vision  —  you  cannot  see 
things   clearly   through   it.      In   the   same   way, 


ILLUSTRATIVE:   THE  SKY.  45 

wherever  vapor  is  illuminated  by  transverse 
rays,  there  it  becomes  visible  as  a  whiteness 
more  or  less  affecting  the  purity  of  the  blue, 
and  destroying  it  exactly  in  proportion  to  the 
degree  of  illumination.  But  where  vapor  is 
in  shade,  it  has  very  little  effect  on  the  sky, 
perhaps  making  it  a  little  deeper  and  grayer 
than  it  otherwise  would  be,  but  not,  itself, 
unless  very  dense,  distinguishable  or  felt  as 
mist. 

24.  Has  the  reader  any  distinct  idea  of  what 
clouds  are? 

*  That  mist  which  lies  in  the  morning  so 
softly  in  the  valley,  level  and  white,  through 
which  the  tops  of  the  trees  rise  as  if  through 
an  inundation  —  why  is  it  so  heavy,  and  why 
does  it  lie  so  low,  being  yet  so  thin  and  frail 
that  it  will  melt  away  utterly  into  splendor 
of  morning  when  the  sun  has  shone  on  it 
but    a    few    moments    more?      Those    colossal 

1  This  is  a  fifth  volume  bit,  and  worth  more  attention. 


46  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

pyramids,  huge  and  firm,  with  outlines  as  of 
rocks,  and  strength  to  bear  the  beating  of 
the  high  sun  full  on  their  fiery  flanks,  —  why 
are  they  so  light,  their  bases  high  over  our 
heads,  high  over  the  heads  of  Alps?  Why 
will  these  melt  away,  not  as  the  sun  rises^ 
but  as  he  descends,  and  leave  the  stars  of 
twilight  clear;  while  the  valley  vapor  gains 
again  upon  the  earth,  like  a  shroud?  Or 
that  ghost  of  a  cloud,  which  steals  by  yonder 
clump  of  pines ;  nay,  which  does  not  steal 
by  them,  but  haunts  them,  wreathing  yet 
roimd  them,  and  yet,  —  and  yet,  —  slowly; 
now  falUng  in  a  fair  waved  hne  like  a  woman's 
veil;  now  fading,  now  gone;  we  look  away 
for  an  instant,  and  look  back,  and  it  is  again 
there.  What  has  it  to  do  with  that  clump 
of  pines,  that  it  broods  by  them,  and  weaves 
itself  among  their  branches,  to  and  fro?  Has 
it  hidden  a  cloudy  treasure  among  the  moss 
at  their  roots,  which  it  watches  thus?  Or 
has    some    strong    enchanter    charmed    it    into 


ILLUSTRATIVE:    THE  SKY.  47 

fond  returning,  or  bound  it  fast  within  those 
bars  of  bough  ?  And  yonder  filmy  crescent, 
bent  Uke  an  archer's  bow  above  the  snowy 
summit,  the  highest  of  all  the  hills  —  that 
white  arch  which  never  forms  but  over  the 
supreme  crest,  —  how  is  it  stayed  there,  re- 
pelled apparently  from  the  snow,  —  nowhere 
touching  it,  the  clear  sky  seen  between  it 
and  the  moimtain  edge,  yet  never  leaving 
it  —  poised  as  a  white  bird  hovers  over  its 
nest?  Or  those  war  clouds  that  gather  on 
the  horizon,  dragon-crested,  tongued  with  fire, 
—  how  is  their  barbed  strength  bridled? 
What  bits  are  those  they  are  champing  with 
their  vaporous  lips,  flinging  off  flakes  of 
black  foam  ?  Leagued  leviathans  of  the 
Sea  of  Heaven,  —  out  of  their  nostrils  goeth 
smoke,  and  their  eyes  are  like  the  eyeUds 
of  the  morning;  the  sword  of  him  that 
layeth  at  them  cannot  hold  the  spear,  the 
dart,  nor  the  habergeon.  Where  ride  the 
captains  of  their  armies?     Where  are   set  the 


48  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

measures  of  their  march?  Fierce  murmurers, 
answering  each  other  from  morning  until  even- 
ing—  what  rebuke  is  this  which  has  awed 
them  into  peace;  —  what  hand  has  reined 
them  back  by  the  way  in  which  they 
came? 

I  know  not  if  the  reader  will  think  at  first 
that  questions  like  these  are  easily  answered. 
So  far  from  it,  I  rather  believe  that  some  of 
the  mysteries  of  the  clouds  never  will  be  under- 
stood by  us  at  all.  "  Knowest  thou  the  balanc- 
ings of  the  clouds?"  Is  the  answer  ever  to 
be  one  of  pride?  The  wondrous  works  of 
Him,  who  is  perfect  in  knowledge?  Is  our 
knowledge  ever  to  be  so?  .  .  . 

For  my  own  part,  I  enjoy  the  mystery,  and 
perhaps  the  reader  may.  I  think  he  ought. 
He  should  not  be  less  grateful  for  summer  rain, 
or  see  less  beauty  in  the  clouds  of  morning, 
because  they  come  to  prove  him  with  hard 
questions;  to  which  perhaps,  if  we  look  close 
at    the    heavenly  scroll,   we    may  find    also   a 


ILLUSTRATIVE:    THE  SKY.  49 

syllable  or  two  of  answer,  illuminated  here  and 
there.' 

And  though  the  chmates  of  the  south  and 
east  may  be  comparatively  clear,  they  are  no 
more  absolutely  clear  than  our  own  northern 
air.  Intense  clearness,  whether,  in  the  north, 
after  or  before  rain,  or  in  some  moments  of 
twilight  in  the  south,  is  always,  as  far  as  I  am 
acquainted  with  natural  phenomena,  a  notabU 
thing.  Mist  of  some  sort,  or  mirage,  or  con- 
fusion of  light  or  of  cloud,  are  the  general 
fiacts;  the  distance  may  vary  in  different  cli- 
mates at  which  the  effects  of  mist  begin,  but 
they  are  always  present;  and  therefore,  in  all 
probabiUty,  it  is  meant  that  we  should  enjoy 
them.  .  .  .  We  surely  need  not  wonder  that 
mist  and  all  its  phenomena  have  been  made 
delightful  to  us,  since  our  happiness  as  think- 
ing beings  must  depend  on  our  being  con- 
tent to  accept  only  partial  knowledge  even  in 

1  Compare,  in  "  Sartor  Resartifi,"  the  boy's  watching  from 
the  garden  walL 


50  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

those    matters    which    chiefly   concern    us.      If 
we  insist   upon   perfect  intelligibility  and   com- 
plete   declaration    in    every  moral    subject,   we 
shall  instantly  fall  into  misery  of  unbelief.     Our 
\   whole  happiness  and  power  of  energetic  action 
I   depend  upon  our   being   able  to   breathe  and 
•    live  in  the   cloud;   content  to  see  it  opening 
\    here,    and    closing    there ;    rejoicing    to    catch ! 
I    through   the   thinnest  films   of  it,   glimpses   of 
;    stable  and  substantial  things;   but  yet  perceiv- 
j  ing  a  nobleness  even  in  the  concealment,  and 
}   rejoicing  that  the  kindly  veil  is  spread  where 
the  untempered  light  might   have  scorched  us, 
or  the  infinite  clearness  wearied.     And  I  believe 
that  the  resentment  of  this  interference  of  the 
mist  is  one  of  the  forms  of  proud  error  which 
are  too  easily  mistaken  for  virtues.     To  be  con- 
tent in  utter  darkness  and  ignorance  is  indeed 
unmanly,  and   therefore  we  think  that  to   love 
light  and  find  knowledge  must  always  be  right. 
Yet  (as  in  all  matters  before  observed,)  wher- 
ever  pride    has   any   share    in   the   work,   even 


ILLUSTRATIVE:    THE  SKY.  51 

knowledge  and  light  may  be  ill  pursued.     Knowl- 
edge is  good,  and  light  is  good :   yet  man  per- 
ished in  seeking  knowledge,  and  moths  perish 
in  seeking  light;  and  if  we,  who  are  crushed 
before  the  moth,  will  not  accept  such  mystery 
as   is   needful   to  us,  we   shall    perish  in  like 
manner.    But,  accepted   in  humbleness,  it  in-    '; 
stantly  becomes  an  element  of  pleasure ;  and    I 
I    think    that    every    rightly    constituted    mind    • 
ought  to  rejoice,  not  so  much  in  knowing  any-    1 
thing  clearly,  as  in  feeling  that  there  is  infinitely     | 
more  which  it  cannot  know.     None  but  proud 
or  weak  men  would  mourn  over  this,  for  we  may 
always  know  more,  if  we  choose,  by  working  on ; 
but  the  pleasure  b,  I  think,  to  humble  people, 
in    knowing    that    the   journey  is   endless,  the 
treasure  inexhaustible,  —  watching  the  cloud  still 
march  before  them  with  its  summitless  pillar, 
and  being  sure  that,  to  the  end  of  time,  and  to 
the  length  of  eternity,  the  mysteries  of  its  in- 
finity will  still  open  farther  and  farther,  their 
dimness  being  the  sign  and  necessary  adjunct 


52  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

of  their  inexhaustibleness.  I  know  there  are 
an  evil  mystery,  and  a  deathful  dimness,  —  the 
mystery  of  the  great  Babylon  —  the  dimness  of 
the  sealed  eye  and  soul ;  but  do  not  let  us  con- 
fuse these  with  the  glorious  mystery  of  the 
things  which  the  "angels  desire  to  look  into," 
or  with  the  dimness  which,  even  before  the 
clear  eye  and  open  soul,  still  rests  on  sealed 
pages  of  the  eternal  volume. 

25.  On  some  isolated  mountain  at  daybreak,^ 
when  the  night  mists  first  rise  from  off  the 
plain,  watch  their  white  and  lake-like  fields,  as 
they  float  in  level  bays,  and  winding  gulfs,  about 
the  islanded  summits  of  the  lower  hills,  un- 
touched   yet  by   more   than   dawn,   colder  and 

1 1  forget  now  what  all  this  is  about.  It  seems  to  be  a 
recollection  of  the  Rigi,  with  assumption  that  the  enthusiastic 
spectator  is  to  stand  for  a  day  and  night  in  observation;  to 
suffer  the  effects  of  a  severe  thunder-storm,  and  to  get  neither 
breakfast  nor  dinner.  I  have  seen  such  a  storm  on  the 
Rigi,  however,  and  more  than  one  such  sunrise;  and  I 
much  doubt  if  its  present  visitors  by  rail  will  see  more. 


ILLUSTRATIVE :    THE  SKY,  53 

more  quiet  than  a  windless  sea  under  the  moon 
of  midnight;  watch  when  the  first  sunbeam  is 
sent  upon  the  silver  channels,  how  the  foam 
of  their  undulating  surface  parts,  and  passes 
away,  and  down  under  their  depths  the  glitter- 
ing city  and  green  pastures  lie  like  Atlantis,  be- 
tween the  white  paths  of  winding  rivers;  the 
flakes  of  light  falling  every  moment  faster  and 
broader  among  the  starry  spires,  as  the 
wreathed  surges  break  and  vanish  above  them, 
and  the  confused  crests  and  ridges  of  the  dark 
hills  shorten  their  gray  shadows  upon  the  plain. 
Wait  a  little  longer,  and  you  shall  see  those 
scattered  mists  rallying  in  the  ravines,  and 
floating  up  towards  you,  along  the  winding 
valleys,  till  they  crouch  in  quiet  masses,  irides- 
cent with  the  morning  light,  upon  the  broad 
breasts  of  the  higher  hills,  whose  leagues  of 
massy  undulation  will  melt  back,  back  into  that 
robe  of  material  Ught,  until  they  fade  away, 
lost  in  its  lustre,  to  appear  again  above  in  the 
serene    heaven   like   a  wild,   bright,   impossible 


54  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

dream,  foundationless,  and  inaccessible,  their 
very  bases  vanishing  in  the  unsubstantial  and 
mocking  blue  of  the  deep  lake  below.  Wait 
yet  a  little  longer,  and  you  shall  see  those 
mists  gather  themselves  into  white  towers,  and 
stand  like  fortresses  along  the  promontories, 
massy  and  motionless,  only  piled,  with  every 
instant,  higher  and  higher  into  the  sky,  and 
casting  longer  shadows  athwart  the  rocks;  and 
out  of  the  pale  blue  of  the  horizon  you  will 
see  forming  and  advancing  a  troop  of  narrow, 
dark,  pointed  vapors,  which  will  cover  the 
sky,  inch  by  inch,  with  their  gray  network, 
and  take  the  light  off  the  landscape  with  an 
eclipse  which  will  stop  the  singing  of  the  birds, 
and  the  motion  of  the  leaves,  together;  —  and 
then  you  will  see  horizontal  bars  of  black 
shadow  forming  under  them,  and  lurid  wreaths 
create  themselves,  you  know  not  how,  among 
the  shoulders  of  the  hills;  you  never  see  them 
form,  but  when  you  look  back  to  a  place  which 
was  clear  an  instant  ago,  there  is  a  cloud  on 


ILLUSTRATIVE:    THE  SKY.  55 

it,  hanging  by  the  precipice,  as  a  hawk  pauses 
over  his  prey;  —  and  then  you  will  hear  the 
sudden  rush  of  the  awakened  wind,  and  you 
will  see  those  watch-towers  of  vapor  swept 
away  from  their  foundations,  and  waving  cur- 
tains of  opaque  rain,  let  down  to  the  valley, 
swinging  from  the  burdened  clouds  in  black 
bending  fringes,  or,  pacing  in  pale  columns 
along  the  lake  level,  grazing  its  surface  into 
foam  as  they  go.  And  then,  as  the  sun  sinks, 
you  shall  see  the  storm  drift  for  an  instant 
from  off  the  hills,  leaving  their  broad  sides 
smoking  and  loaded  yet  with  snow-white,  torn, 
steam-like  rags  of  capricious  vapor,  now  gone, 
now  gathered  again, — while  the  smouldering  sun, 
seeming  not  far  away,  but  burning  like  a  red- 
hot  ball  beside  you,  and  as  if  you  could  reach 
it,  plunges  through  the  rushing  wind  and  roll- 
ing cloud  with  headlong  fall,  as  if  it  meant  to 
rise  no  more,  dyeing  all  the  air  about  it  with 
blood;  —  and  then  you  shall  hear  the  fainting 
tempest  die  in  the  hollow  of  the  night,  and  you 


56  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

shall  see  a  green  halo  kindling  on  the  summit 
of  the  eastern  hills,  brighter,  brighter  yet,  till 
the  large  white  circle  of  the  slow  moon  is 
lifted  up  among  the  barred  clouds,  step  by 
step,  line  by  line;  star  after  star  she  quenches 
with  her  kindling  light,  setting  in  their  stead 
an  army  of  pale,  penetrable,  fleecy  wreaths  in 
the  heaven,  to  give  hght  upon  the  earth,  which 
move  together  hand  in  hand,  company  by 
company,  troop  by  troop,  so  measured  in  their 
imity  of  motion  that  the  whole  heaven  seenM 
to  roll  with  them,  and  the  earth  to  reel  under 
them.  And  then  wait  yet  for  one  hour,  until 
the  east  again  becomes  purple,  and  the  heav- 
ing mountains,  rolling  against  it  in  darkness, 
like  waves  of  a  wild  sea,  are  drowned  one 
by  one  in  the  glory  of  its  burning ;  watch  the 
white  glaciers  blaze  in  their  winding  paths 
about  the  mountains,  like  mighty  serpents  with 
scales  of  fire :  watch  the  columnar  peaks  of 
solitary  snow,  kindling  downwards  chasm  by 
chasm,   each  in  itself  a    new    morning  —  their 


ILLUSTRATIVE:    THE  SKY.  57 

long  avalanches  cast  down  in  keen  streams 
brighter  than  the  lightning,  sending  each  his 
tribute  of  driven  snow,  like  altar-smoke,  up  to 
heaven;  the  rose-light  of  their  silent  domes 
flushing  that  heaven  about  them,  and  above 
them,  piercing  with  purer  light  through  its 
purple  lines  of  hfted  cloud,  casting  a  new  glory 
on  every  wreath,  as  it  passes  by,  until  the 
whole  heaven,  one  scarlet  canopy,  is  inter- 
woven with  a  roof  of  waving  flame,  and  tossing 
vault  beyond  vault,  as  with  the  drifted  wings  of 
many  companies  of  angels :  and  then,  when  you 
can  look  no  more  for  gladness,  and  when  you 
are  bowed  down  with  fear  and  love  of  the 
Maker  and  Doer  of  this,  tell  me  who  has  best 
delivered  this  His  message  unto  men ! 

26.  '  The  account  given  of  the  stages  of  crea- 
tion in  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis  is  in  every 

1  This  passage,  to  the  end  of  the  section,  is  one  of  the  last, 
and  best,  which  I  wrote  in  the  temper  of  my  youth ;  and  I 
can  still  ratify  if,  thus  far,  that  the  texts  referred  to  in  it  must 
either  be  received  as  it  explains  them,  or  neglected  altogether. 


58  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

respect  clear  and  intelligible  to  the  simplest 
reader,  except  in  the  statement  of  the  work  of 
the  second  day.  I  suppose  that  this  statement 
is  passed  over  by  careless  readers  without  any 
endeavor  to  understand  it,  and  contemplated 
by  simple  and  faithful  readers  as  a  sublime 
mystery  which  was  not  intended  to  be  under- 
stood. But  there  is  no  mystery  in  any  other 
part  of  the  chapter,  and  it  seems  to  me  unjust  to 
conclude  that  any  was  intended  here.  And  the 
passage  ought  to  be  peculiarly  interesting  to  us, 
as  being  the  first  in  the  Bible  in  which  the 
heavens  are  named,  and  the  only  one  in  which 
the  word  "Heaven,"  all-important  as  that  word 
is  to  our  understanding  of  the  most  precious 
promises  of  Scripture,  receives  a  definite  expla- 
nation. Let  us  therefore  see  whether,  by  a  little 
careful  comparison  of  the  verse  with  other 
passages  in  which  the  word  occurs,  we  may  not 
be  able  to  arrive  at  as  clear  an  understanding  of 
this  portion  of  the  chapter  as  of  the  rest.  In 
the  first  place  the  English  word,  "Firmament," 


ILLUSTRATIVE:   THE  SKY.  59 

itself  is  obscure  and  useless ;  because  we  never 
employ  it  but  as  a  synonym  of  heaven,  it  con- 
veys no  other  distinct  idea  to  us ;  and  the  verse, 
though  from  our  familiarity  with  it  we  imagine 
that  it  possesses  meaning,  has  in  reality  no 
more  point  nor  value  than  if  it  were  written, 
."God  said,  Let  there  be  a  something  in  the 
midst  of  the  waters,  and  God  called  the  some- 
thing, Heaven,"  But  the  marginal  reading, 
"  Expansion,"  has  definite  value ;  and  the  state- 
ment that  "  God  said.  Let  there  be  an  expansion 
in  the  midst  of  the  waters,  and  God  called  the 
expansion.  Heaven,"  has  an  apprehensible  mean- 
ing. Accepting  this  •  expression  as  the  one 
intended,  we  have  next  to  ask  what  expansion 
there  is,  between  two  waters,  describable  by  the 
term  "heaven."  Milton  adopts  the  term  "ex- 
panse," but  he  understands  it  of  the  whole  vol- 
ume of  the  air  which  surrounds  the  earth. 
Whereas,  so  far  as  we  can  tell,  there  is  no  water 
beyond  the  air,  in  the  fields  of  space ;  and  the 
whole    expression    of   division    of   waters  from 


6o  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

waters  is  thus  rendered  valueless.  Now  with 
respect  to  this  whole  chapter,  we  must  remem- 
ber always  that  it  is  intended  for  the  instruction 
of  all  mankind,  not  for  the  learned  reader  only ; 
and  that  therefore  the  most  simple  and  natural 
interpretation  is  the  likeliest  in  general  to  be  the 
true  one.  An  unscientific  reader  knows  little 
about  the  manner  in  which  the  volume  of  the 
atmosphere  surrounds  the  earth ;  but  I  imagine 
that  he  could  hardly  glance  at  the  sky  when  rain 
was  falling  in  the  distance,  and  see  the  level  line 
of  the  bases  of  the  clouds  from  which  the  shower 
descended,  without  being  able  to  attach  an  in- 
stant and  easy  meaning  to  the  words,  "expan- 
sion in  the  midst  of  the  waters ; "  and  if,  having 
once  seized  this  idea,  he  proceeded  to  examine 
it  more  accurately,  he  would  perceive  at  once, 
if  he  had  ever  noticed  anything  of  the  nature  of 
clouds,  that  the  level  line  of  their  bases  did 
indeed  most  severely  and  stringently  divide 
"waters  from  waters" — that  is  to  say,  divide 
water  in  its  collective  and  tangible  state,  from 


ILLUSTRATIVE :   THE  SKY.  6l 

water  in  its  aerial  state ;  or  the  waters  which /a//, 
and  flow,  from  those  which  rise,  and  float. 
Next,  if  we  try  this  interpretation  in  the  theo- 
logical sense  of  the  word  heaven,  and  examine 
whether  the  clouds  are  spoken  of  as  God's  dwell- 
ing-place, we  find  God  going  before  the  Israel- 
ites in  a  pillar  of  cloud;  revealing  Himself  in 
a  cloud  on  Sinai ;  appearing  in  a  cloud  on  the 
mercy-seat ;  filling  the  Temple  of  Solomon  with 
the  cloud  when  its  dedication  is  accepted;  ap- 
pearing in  a  great  cloud  to  Ezekiel;  ascending 
into  a  cloud  before  the  eyes  of  the  disciples  on 
Mount  Olivet ;  and  in  like  manner  returning  to 
judgment :  "  Behold  He  cometh  with  clouds, 
and  every  eye  shall  see  Him."  "Then  shall 
they  see  the  Son  of  Man  coming  in  the  clouds 
of  heaven,  with  power  and  great  glory."  While, 
further,  the  "clouds"  and  "heavens"  are  used 
as  interchangeable  words  in  those  psalms  which 
most  distinctly  set  forth  the  power  of  God : 
"  He  bowed  the  heavens  also,  and  came  down ; 
He  made  darkness  pavilions  round  about  Him, 


62  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

dark  waters,  and  thick  clouds  of  the  skies." 
And  again,  "Thy  mercy,  O  Lord,  is  in  the 
heavens,  and  Thy  faithfulness  reacheth  unto  the 
clouds."  And  again,  "His  excellency  is  over 
Israel,  and  His  strength  is  in  the  clouds."  And 
again,  "The  clouds  poured  out  water,  the  skies 
sent  out  a  sound,  the  voice  of  Thy  thunder  was 
in  the  heaven."  Again,  "Clouds  and  darkness 
are  round  about  Him,  righteousness  and  judg- 
ment are  the  habitation  of  His  throne ;  the 
heavens  declare  His  righteousness,  and  all  the 
people  see  His  glory."  In  all  these  passages 
the  meaning  is  unmistakable  if  they  possess 
definite  meaning  at  all.  We  are  too  apt  to  take 
them  merely  for  sublime  and  vague  imagery, 
and  therefore  gradually  to  lose  the  apprehension 
of  their  life  and  power.  The  expression,  "He 
bowed  the  heavens,"  for  instance,  is,  I  suppose, 
received  by  most  readers  as  a  magnificent  hyper- 
bole, having  reference  to  some  peculiar  and 
fearful  manifestation  of  God's  power  to  the 
writer  of  the  psalm  in  which  the  words  occur. 


ILLUSTRATIVE:    THE  SKY.  63 

But  the  expression  either  has  plain  meaning,  or 
it  has  no  meaning.  Understand  by  the  term 
"  heavens  "  the  compass  of  infinite  space  around 
the  earth,  and  the  expression  "bowed  the 
heavens,"  however  sublime,  is  wholly  without 
meaning :  infinite  space  cannot  be  bent  or 
bowed.  But  understand  by  the  "heavens"  the 
veil  of  clouds  above  the  earth,  and  the  expres- 
sion is  neither  hyperbolical  nor  obscure ;  it  is 
pure,  plain,  accurate  truth,  and  it  describes  God, 
not  as  revealing  Himself  in  any  peculiar  way  to 
David,  but  doing  what  He  is  still  doing  before 
our  own  eyes,  day  by  day.  By  accepting  the 
words  in  their  simple  sense,  we  are  thus  led  to 
apprehend  the  immediate  presence  of  the  Deity, 
and  His  purpose  of  manifesting  Himself  as  near 
us  whenever  the  storm-cloud  stoops  upon  its 
course;  while  by  our  vague  and  inaccurate  ac- 
ceptance of  the  words,  we  remove  the  idea  of 
His  presence  far  from  us,  into  a  region  which 
we  can  neither  see  nor  know:  and  gradually, 
from  the  close  realization  of  a  living  God,  who 


64  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

"  maketh  the  clouds  His  chariot,"  we  define  and 
explain  ourselves  into  dim  and  distant  suspicion 
of  an  inactive  God  inhabiting  inconceivable 
places,  and  fading  into  the  multitudinous  formal- 
isms of  the  laws  of  Nature.  All  errors  of  this 
kind  —  and  in  the  present  day  we  are  in  con- 
stant and  grievous  danger  of  falling  into  them  — 
arise  from  the  originally  mistaken  idea  that  man 
can,  "  by  searching,  find  out  God  —  find  out  the 
Almighty  to  perfection"  —  that  is  to  say,  by 
help  of  courses  of  reasoning  and  accumulations 
of  science,  apprehend  the  nature  of  the  Deity, 
in  a  more  exalted  and  more  accurate  manner 
than  in  a  state  of  comparative  ignorance; 
I  whereas  it  is  clearly  necessary,  from  the  begin- 
ning to  the  end  of  time,  that  God's  way  of  re- 
vealing Himself  to  His  creatures  should  be  a 
simple  way,  which  all  those  creatures  may  under- 
stand. '  Whether  taught  or  untaught,  whether  of 
mean  capacity  or  enlarged,  it  is  necessary  that 
communion  with  their  Creator  should  be  possi- 
ble to  all;  and  the  admission  to  such  commun- 


ILLUSTRATIVE :    THE  SKY.  6$ 

ion  must  be  rested,  not  on  their  having  a 
knowledge  of  astronomy,  but  on  their  having  a 
human  soul.  In  order  to  render  this  commun- 
ion possible,  the  Deity  has  stooped  from  His 
throne,  and  has,  not  only  in  the  person  of  the 
Son,  taken  upon  Him  the  veil  of  our  human 
flesh,  but,  in  the  person  of  the  Father,  taken 
upon  Him  the  veil  of  our  human  thoughts,  and 
permitted  us,  by  His  own  spoken  authority,  to 
conceive  Him  simply  and  clearly  as  a  loving 
father  and  friend ;  a  being  to  be  walked  with 
and  reasoned  with,  to  be  moved  by  our  entrea- 
ties, angered  by  our  rebellion,  alienated  by  our 
coldness,  pleased  by  our  love,  and  glorified  by 
our  labor;  and,  finally,  to  be  beheld  in  im- 
mediate and  active  presence  in  all  the  powers 
and  changes  of  creation.  This  conception  of 
God,  which  is  the  child's,  is  evidently  the  only 
one  which  can  be  universal,  and,  therefore,  the 
only  one  which /<7r  us  can  be  true.  The  moment 
that,  in  our  pride  of  heart,  we  refuse  to  accept  the 
condescension  of  the  Almighty,  and  desire  Him, 


66  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

instead  of  stooping  to  hold  our  hands,  to  rise  up 
before  us  into  His  glory,  we  hoping  that,  by 
standing  on  a  grain  of  dust  or  two  of  human 
knowledge  higher  than  our  fellows,  we  may  be> 
hold  the  Creator  as  He  rises,  —  God  takes  us  at 
our  word.  He  rises  into  His  own  invisible  and 
inconceivable  majesty;  He  goes  forth  upon  the 
ways  which  are  not  our  ways,  and  retires  into 
the  thoughts  which  are  not  our  thoughts;  and 
we  are  left  alone.  And  presently  we  say  in  our 
vain  hearts,  "There  is  no  God." 

I  would  desire,  therefore,  to  receive  God's 
account  of  His  own  creation  as  under  the 
ordinary  limits  of  human  knowledge  and  im- 
agination it  would  be  received  by  a  simple- 
minded  man;  and  finding  that  "the  heavens 
and  the  earth"  are  spoken  of  always  as  hav- 
ing something  like  equal  relation  to  each 
other,  ("  Thus  the  heavens  and  the  earth 
were  finished,  and  all  the  host  of  them,")  I 
reject  at  once  all  idea  of  the  term  "  heavens  " 
being  intended  to  signify  the  infinity  of  space 


ILLUSTRATIVE:    THE  SKY.  67 

inhabited  by  countless  worlds;  for  between 
those  infinite  heavens  and  the  particle  of  sand, 
which  not  the  earth  only,  but  the  sun  itself, 
with  all  the  solar  system,  is,  in  relation  to 
them,  no  relation  of  equality  or  comparison 
could  be  inferred.  But  I  suppose  the  heavens 
to  mean  that  part  of  creation  which  holds 
equal  companionship  with  our  globe ;  I  under- 
stand the  "  rolling  of  these  heavens  together 
as  a  scroll,"  to  be  an  equal  and  relative 
destruction  with  the  melting  of  the  elements 
in  fervent  heat;  and  I  understand  the  making 
of  the  firmament  to  signify  that,  so  far  as 
man  is  concerned,  most  magnificent  ordinance 
of  the  clouds;  —  the  ordinance  that,  as  the 
great  plain  of  waters  was  formed  on  the  face 
of  the  earth,  so  also  a  plain  of  waters  should 
be  stretched  along  the  height  of  air,  and  the 
face  of  the  cloud  answer  the  face  of  the 
ocean;  and  that  this  upper  and  heavenly  plain 
should  be  of  waters,  as  it  were,  glorified  in 
their  nature,  no  longer  quenching  the  fire,  but 


68  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

now  bearing  fire  in  their  own  bosoms;  no 
longer  murmuring  only  when  the  winds  raise 
them  or  rocks  divide,  but  answering  each  other 
with  their  own  voices,  from  pole  to  pole; 
no  longer  restrained  by  established  shores,  and 
guided  through  unchanging  channels,  but  going 
forth  at  their  pleasure  like  the  armies  of  the 
angels,  and  choosing  their  encampments  upon 
the  heights  of  the  hills;  no  longer  hurried 
downwards  forever,  moving  but  to  fall,  nor 
lost  in  the  lightless  accumulation  of  the  abyss, 
but  covering  the  east  and  west  with  the  wav- 
ing of  their  wings,  and  robing  the  gloom  of 
the  farther  infinite  with  a  vesture  of  diverse 
colors,  of  which  the  threads  are  purple  and 
scarlet,  and  the  embroideries  flame. 

This  I  believe  is  the  ordinance  of  the  firma- 
ment; and  it  seems  to  me  that  in  the  midst 
of  the  material  nearness  of  these  heavens,  God 
means  us  to  acknowledge  His  own  immediate 
presence  as  visiting,  judging,  and  blessing  us : 
"The   earth    shook,   the    heavens   also  dropped 


ILLUSTRATIVE:    THE  SKY.  69 

at  the  presence  of  God."  "He  doth  set  His 
bow  in  the  clouds,"  and  thus  renews,  in  the 
sound  of  every  drooping  swathe  of  rain.  His 
promises  of  everlasting  love.  "  In  them  hath 
He  set  a  tabernacle  for  the  sun ; "  whose  burn- 
ing ball,  which,  without  the  firmament,  would 
be  seen  but  as  an  intolerable  and  scorching 
circle  in  the  blackness  of  vacuity,  is  by  that 
firmament  surrounded  with  gorgeous  service, 
and  tempered  by  mediatorial  ministries :  by 
the  firmament  of  clouds  the  temple  is  built, 
for  his  presence  to  fill  with  light  at  noon;  by 
the  firmament  of  clouds  the  purple  veil  is 
closed  at  evening,  round  the  sanctuary  of  his 
rest;  by  the  mists  of  the  firmament  his  im- 
placable light  is  divided,  and  its  separated 
fierceness  appeased  into  the  soft  blue  that  fills 
the  depth  of  distance  with  its  bloom,  and  the 
flush  with  which  the  mountains  bum,  as  they 
drink  the  overflowing  of  the  dayspring.  And 
in  this  tabernacling  of  the  unendurable  sun  with 
men,  through   the    shadows  of  the   firmament, 


70  FRONDES  AG  RESTS  S.  ' 

God  would  seem  to  set  forth  the  stooping  of 
His  own  Majesty  to  men,  upon  the  throne  of 
the  firmament.  As  the  Creator  of  all  the 
worlds,  and  the  Inhabiter  of  eternity,  we  can- 
not behold  Him;  but  as  the  Judge  of  the 
earth  and  the  Preserver  of  men,  those  heavens 
are  indeed  His  dwelling-place :  "  Swear  not, 
neither  by  heaven,  for  it  is  God's  throne ;  nor 
by  the  earth,  for  it  is  His  footstool ! "  And 
I  all  those  passings  to  and  fro  of  fruitful  showers 
and  grateful  shade,  and  all  those  visions  of 
silver  palaces  built  about  the  horizon,  and  ' 
voices  of  moaning  winds  and  threatening  thun-  | 
ders,  and  glories  of  colored  robe  and  cloven 
ray,  are  but  to  deepen  in  our  hearts  the  ac- 
ceptance, and  distinctness,  and  deamess  of  the 
simple  words,  "  Our  Father,  which  art  in 
heaven." 


SECTION   IV. 

illustrative:  streams  and  sea. 

27.  Of  all  inorganic  substances,  acting  in 
their  own  proper  nature,  and  without  assistance 
and  combination,  water  is  the  most  wonderful. 
If  we  think  of  it  as  the  source  of  all  the  change- 
fiilness  and  beauty  which  we  have  seen  in 
clouds,  —  then,  as  the  instrument  by  which  the 
earth  we  have  contemplated  was  modelled  into 
symmetry,  and  its  crags  chiselled  into  grace;  — 
then,  as  in  the  form  of  snow,  it  robes  the  moun- 
tains it  has  made  with  that  transcendent  light 
which  we  could  not  have  conceived  if  we  had 
not  seen; — then,  as  it  exists  in  the  foam  of  the 
torrent,  in  the  iris  which  spans  it,  in  the  morn- 
ing mist  which  rises  from  it,  in  the  deep  crys- 
talline pools  which  mirror  its  hanging  shore, 
in  the  broad  lake  and  glancing  river;  —  finally, 
71 


72  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

in  that  which  is  to  all  human  minds  the  best 
emblem  of  unwearied,  unconquerable  power, 
the  wild,  various,  fantastic,  tameless  unity  of  the 
sea;  —  what  shall  we  compare  to  this  mighty, 
this  imiversal  element,  for  glory  and  beauty? 
or  how  shall  we  follow  its  eternal  changefulness 
of  feeUng?     It  is  like   trying  to  paint   a   soul ! 

28.  The  great  angel  of  the  sea  —  rain;  the 
angel,  observe,  —  the  messenger  sent  to  a  spe- 
cial place  on  a  special  errand.  Not  the  dif- 
fused, perpetual  presence  of  the  burden  of  mist, 
but  the  going  and  returning  of  the  intermittent 
cloud.  All  turns  upon  that  intermittence.  Soft 
moss  on  stone  and  rock;  cave  fern  of  tangled 
glen;  wayside  well  —  perennial,  patient,  silent, 
clear,  stealing  through  its  square  font  of  rough- 
hewn  stone ;  ever  thus  deep,  no  more ;  —  which 
the  winter  wreck  sullies  not,  the  summer  thirst 
wastes  not,  incapable  of  stain  as  of  decline ;  — 
where  the  fallen  leaf  floats  undecayed,  and  the 
insect  darts  undefiling :  cressed  brook  and  ever- 


ILLUSTRATIVE  :   STREAMS  AND  SEA.    73 

eddying  river,  lifted  even  in  flood  scarcely  over 
its  stepping  stones,  —  but  through  all  sweet 
summer  keeping  tremulous  music  with  harp- 
strings  of  dark  water  among  the  silver  finger- 
ing of  the  pebbles.  Far  away  in  the  south  the 
strong  river  gods  have  all  hasted,  and  gone 
down  to  the  sea.  Wasted  and  burning,  white 
furnaces  of  blasting  sand,  their  broad  beds  lie 
ghastly  and  bare;  but  here  in  the  moss  lands, 
the  soft  wings  of  the  sea  angel  droop  still  with 
dew,  and  the  shadows  of  their  plumes  falter  on 
the  hills ;  strange  laughings  and  glitterings  of 
silver  streamlets,  born  suddenly,  and  twined 
about  the  mossy  heights  in  trickling  tinsel,  an- 
swering to  them  as  they  wave. 

29.  Stand  for  half  an  hour  beside  the  fall  of 
Schaffhausen,  on  the  north  side,  where  the  rap- 
ids are  long,  and  watch  how  the  vault  of  water 
first  bends  unbroken,  in  pure  polished  velocity, 
over  the  arching  rocks  at  the  brow  of  the  cata- 
ract,  covering    them  with    a   dome    of   crystal 


74  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

twenty  feet  thick,  so  swift  that  its  motion  is 
unseen  except  when  a  foam  globe  from  above 
darts  over  it  like  a  falling  star;  and  how  the 
trees  are  lighted  above  it  under  all  their  leaves,^ 
at  the  instant  that  it  breaks  into  foam ;  and  how 
all  the  hollows  of  that  foam  burn  with  green  fire 
like  so  much  shattering  chrysoprase;  and  how, 
ever  and  anon  startling  you  with  its  white  flash, 
a  jet  of  spray  leaps  hissing  out  of  the  fall,  like  a 
rocket,  bursting  in  the  wind  and  driven  away 
in  dust,  filling  the  air  ^vith  light;  and  how 
through  the  curdling  wreaths  of  the  restless 
crashing  abyss  below,  the  blue  of  the  water, 
paled  by  the  foam  in  its  body,  shows  purer 
than  the  sky  through  white  rain-cloud,  while 
the  shuddering  iris  stoops  in  tremulous  stillness 
over  all,  fading  and  flushing  alternately  through 
the  choking  spray  and  shattered  sunshine,  hid- 

1  Well  noticed.  The  drawing  of  the  fall  of  Schaflfhausen, 
which  I  made  at  the  time  of  writing  this  study,  was  one  of 
the  very  few,  either  by  other  draughtsmen  or  myself,  which  I 
have  seen  Turner  pause  at  with  serious  attention. 


ILLUSTRATIVE:  STREAMS  AND  SEA.     75 

ing  itself  at  last  among  the  thick  golden  leaves 
which  toss  to  and  fro  in  sympathy  with  the 
wild  water,  —  their  dripping  masses  lifted  at 
intervals,  like  sheaves  of  loaded  corn,  by  some 
stronger  gush  from  the  cataract,  and  bowed 
again  upon  the  mossy  rocks  as  its  roar  dies 
away,  —  the  dew  gushing  from  their  thick 
branches  through  drooping  clusters  of  emerald 
herbage,  and  sparkUng  in  white  threads  along 
the  dark  rocks  of  the  shore,  feeding  the  lichens, 
which  chase  and  checker  them  with  purple  and 
silver. 

30.  Close  beside  the  path  by  which  travel- 
lers ascend  the  Montanvert  from  the  valley  of 
Chamouni,  on  the  right  hand,  where  it  first 
begins  to  rise  among  the  pines,  there  descends 
a  small  stream  from  the  foot  of  the  granite 
peak  known  to  the  guides  as  the  Aiguille 
Charmoz.  It  is  concealed  from  the  traveller 
by  a  thicket  of  alder,  and  its  murmur  is  hardly 
heard,  for  it  is  one  of  the  weakest  streams  of 


76  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

the  valley.  But  it  is  a  constant  stream,  fed 
by  a  permanent,  though  small,  glacier;  and 
continuing  to  flow  even  to  the  close  of  sum- 
mer, when  more  copious  torrents,  depending 
only  on  the  melting  of  the  lower  snows,  have 
left  their  beds,  —  "stony  channels  in  the  sim." 
The  long  drought  which  took  place  in  the 
autumn  of  1854,  sealing  every  source  of  waters 
except  these  perpetual  ones,  left  the  torrent 
of  which  I  am  speaking,  and  such  others,  in  a 
state  peculiarly  favorable  to  observance  of 
their  least  action  on  the  mountains  from  which 
they  descend.  They  were  entirely  limited  to 
their  own  ice  foimtains,  and  the  quantity  of 
powdered  rock  which  they  brought  down  was, 
of  course,  at  its  minimum,  being  nearly  un- 
mingled  with  any  earth  derived  from  the  dis- 
solution of  softer  soil,  or  vegetable  mould,  by 
rains.  At  three  in  the  afternoon,  on  a  warm 
day  in  September,  when  the  torrent  had  reached 
its  average  maximum  strength  for  the  day,  I 
filled  an  ordinary  Bordeaux  wine  flask  with  the 


ILLUSTRATIVE :  STREAMS  AND  SEA.     77 

water  where  it  was  least  turbid.  From  this 
quart  of  water  I  obtained  twenty-four  grains 
of  sand  and  sediment  more  or  less  fine.  I 
cannot  estimate  the  quantity  of  water  in  the 
stream ;  but  the  runlet  of  it  at  which  I  filled 
the  flask  was  giving  about  two  hundred  bottles 
a  minute,  or  rather  more,  carrying  down,  there- 
fore, about  three  quarters  of  a  pound  of  pow- 
dered granite  every  minute.  This  would  be 
forty-five  pounds  an  hour;  but  allowing  for  the 
inferior  power  of  the  stream  in  the  cooler  pe- 
riods of  the  day,  and  taking  into  consideration, 
on  the  other  side,  its  increased  power  in  rain,  we 
may,  I  think,  estimate  its  average  hour's  work 
at  twenty-eight  or  thirty  pounds,  or  a  hundred- 
weight every  four  hours.  By  this  insignificant 
runlet,  therefore,  rather  more  than  two  tons  of 
the  substance  of  the  Mont  Blanc  are  displaced 
and  carried  down  a  certain  distance  every 
week;  and  as  it  is  only  for  three  or  four 
months  that  the  flow  of  the  stream  is  checked 
by   frost,  we    may   certainly   allow    eighty   tons 


78  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

for  the  mass  which  it  annually  moves.  It  is 
not  worth  while  to  enter  into  any  calculation 
of  the  relation  borne  by  this  runlet  to  the 
great  torrents  which  descend  from  the  chain 
of  Mont  Blanc  into  the  valley  of  ChamounL^ 
I  but  take  this  quantity,  eighty  tons,  as  the 
result  of  the  labor  of  a  scarcely  noticeable 
runlet  at  the  side  of  one  of  them,  utterly  irre- 
spective of  all  sudden  falls  of  stones  and  of 
masses  of  mountain  (a  single  thunderbolt  will 
sometimes  leave  a  scar  on  the  flank  of  a  soft 
rock  looking  like  a  trench  for  a  railroad),  and 
we  shall  then  begin  to  apprehend  something 
of  the  operation  of  the  great  laws  of  change 
which  are  the  conditions  of  all  material  exist- 
ence, however  apparently  enduring.  The  hills, 
which,  as  compared  with  living  beings,  seem 
"everlasting,"  are  in  truth  as  perishing  as  they; 

1  I  have  slightly  modified  and  abridged  what  follows, 
being  impatient  of  its  prolixity,  as  well  as  ashamed  of  what 
is  truly  called  the  ludicrous  underestimate  of  the  mass  of 
the  larger  streams. 


ILLUSTRATIVE:   STREAMS  AND   SEA.     79 

its  veins  of  flowing  fountain  weary  the  moun- 
tain heart,  as  the  crimson  pulse  does  ours; 
the  natural  force  of  the  iron  crag  is  abated  in 
its  appointed  time,  like  the  strength  of  the 
sinews  in  a  human  old  age;  and  it  is  but  the 
lapse  of  the  longer  years  of  decay  which,  in 
the  sight  of  its  Creator,  distinguishes  the  moun- 
tain range  from  the  moth  and  the  worm. 

31.  Few  people,  comparatively,  have  ever 
seen  the  effect  on  the  sea  of  a  powerful  gale 
continued  without  intermission  for  three  or  four 
days  and  nights;  and  to  those  who  have  not, 
I  believe  it  must  be  unimaginable,  not  from 
the  mere  force  or  size  of  surge,  but  from  the 
complete  annihilation  of  the  limit  between  sea 
and  air.  The  water,  from  its  prolonged  agita- 
tion, is  beaten,  not  into  mere  creamy  foam, 
but  into  masses  of  accumulated  yeast,  which 
hang  in  ropes  and  wreaths  from  wave  to  wave ; 
and  where  one  curls  over  to  break,  form  a 
festoon   like   a   drapery    from    its    edge ;    these 


8o  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

are  taken  up  by  the  wind,  not  in  dissipating 
dust,  but  bodily,  in  writhing,  hanging,  coiling 
masses,  which  make  the  air  white,  and  thick 
as  with  snow,  only  the  flakes  are  a  foot  or 
two  long  each;  the  surges  themselves  are  full 
of  foam  in  their  very  bodies,  underneath,  mak- 
ing them  white  all  through,  as  the  water  is 
under  a  great  cataract,  —  and  their  masses, 
being  thus  half  water  and  half  air,  are  torn  to 
pieces  by  the  wind  whenever  they  rise,  and 
carried  away  in  roaring  smoke,  which  chokes 
and  strangles  like  actual  water.  Add  to  this, 
that  when  the  air  has  been  exhausted  of  its 
moisture  by  long  rain,  the  spray  of  the  sea 
is  caught  by  it  as  described  above,  and  covers 
its  surface  not  merely  with  the  smoke  of  finely 
divided  water,  but  with  boiling  mist :  imagine 
also  the  low  rain-clouds  brought  down  to  the 
very  level  of  the  sea,  as  I  have  often  seen 
them,  whirling  and  flying  in  rags  and  frag- 
ments from  wave  to  wave;  and  finally  con- 
ceive   the    surges    themselves    in    their   utmost 


ILLUSTRATIVE:   STREAMS  AND  SEA.     8 1 

pitch  of  power,  velocity,  vastness,  and  madness, 
lifting  themselves  in  precipices  and  peaks  fur- 
rowed with  their  whirl  of  ascent,  through  all 
this  chaos;  and  you  will  understand  that  there 
is  indeed  no  distinction  left  between  the  sea 
and  air;  that  no  object,  nor  horizon,  nor  any 
landmark,  or  natural  evidence  of  position  is 
left;  that  the  heaven  is  all  spray,  and  the 
ocean  all  cloud,  and  that  you  can  see  no 
farther  in  any  direction  than  you  could  see 
through  a  cataract^ 

1  The  whole  of  this  vras  written  merely  to  show  the  mean- 
ing of  Turner's  picture  of  the  steamer  in  distress,  throwing 
up  signals.  It  is  a  good  study  of  wild  weather;  but,  sepa- 
rate from  its  aim,  utterly  feeble  in  comparison  to  the  few 
words  by  which  any  of  the  great  poets  will  describe  sea, 
when  they  have  got  to  do  it  I  am  rather  proud  of  the  short 
sentence  in  the  "  Harbours  of  England,"  describing  a  great 
breaker  against  rock:  "One  moment,  a  flint  cave,  —  the 
next,  a  marble  pillar,  —  the  next,  a  fading  cloud."  But  there 
is  nothing  in  sea-description,  detailed,  like  Dickens'  storm  at 
the  death  of  Ham,  in  "  David  Copperfield." 


SECTION   V. 

ILLUSTRATIVE  :    MOUNTAINS. 

32.  The  words  which  marked  for  us  the 
purpose  of  the  clouds  are  followed  immedi- 
ately by  those  notable  ones,  — "  And  God  said, 
Let  the  waters  which  are  under  the  heavens 
be  gathered  together  into  one  place,  and  let 
the  dry  land  appear."  We  do  not,  perhaps, 
often  enough  consider  the  deep  signification  of 
this  sentence.  We  are  too  apt  to  receive  it 
as  the  description  of  an  event  vaster  only  in 
its  extent,  not  in  its  nature,  than  the  compel- 
ling of  the  Red  Sea  to  draw  back  that  Israel 
might  pass  by.  We  imagine  the  Deity  in  like 
manner  rolling  the  waves  of  the  greater  ocean 
together  on  an  heap,  and  setting  bars  and  doors 
to  them  eternally.  But  there  is  a  far  deeper 
meaning  than  this  in  the  solemn  words  of 
82 


ILLUSTRATIVE:  MOUNTAINS.  Zj, 

Genesis,  and  in  the  correspondent  verse  of  the 
Psahn,  "  His  hands  prepared  the  dry  land." 
Up  to  that  moment  the  earth  had  been  void; 
for  it  had  been  without  form.  The  command 
that  the  waters  should  be  gathered,  was  the 
command  that  the  earth  should  be  sculptured. 
The  sea  was  not  driven  to  its  place  in  sud- 
denly restrained  rebellion,  but  withdrawn  to  its 
place  in  perfect  and  patient  obedience.  The 
dry  land  appeared,  not  in  level  sands  forsaken 
by  the  surges,  which  those  surges  might  again 
claim  for  their  own ;  but  in  range  beyond  range 
of  swelling  hill  and  iron  rock,  forever  to  claim 
kindred  with  the  firmament,  and  be  compan- 
ioned by  the  clouds  of  heaven. 

What  space  of  time  was  in  reality  occupied  by 
the  "  day  "  of  Genesis,  is  not  at  present  of  any 
importance  for  us  to  consider.  By  what  furnaces 
of  fire  the  adamant  was  melted,  and  by  what 
wheels  of  earthquake  it  was  torn,  and  by  what 
teeth  of  glacier  and  weight  of  sea-waves  it  was 
engraven  and  finished  into  its  perfect  form,  we 


84  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

may,  perhaps,  hereafter  endeavor  to  conjecture; 
but  here,  as  in  few  words  the  work  is  summed  by 
the  historian,  so  in  few  broad  thoughts  it  should 
be  comprehended  by  us;  and,  as  we  read  the 
mighty  sentence,  "  Let  the  dry  land  appear," 
we  should  try  to  follow  the  finger  of  God  as  it 
engraved  upon  the  stone  tables  of  the  earth  the 
letters  and  the  law  of  its  everlasting  form,  as  gulf 
by  gulf  the  channels  of  the  deep  were  ploughed ; 
and  cape  by  cape  the  lines  were  traced  with 
Divine  foreknowledge  of  the  shores  that  were 
to  limit  the  nations;  and  chain  by  chain  the 
mountain  walls  were  lengthened  forth,  and  their 
foundations  fastened  forever;  and  the  compass 
was  set  upon  the  face  of  the  depth,  and  the 
fields  and  the  highest  part  of  the  dust  of  the 
world  were  made ;  and  the  right  hand  of  Christ 
first  strewed  the  snow  on  Lebanon,  and  smoothed 
the  slopes  of  Calvary. 

It  is  not,  I  repeat,  always  needful,  in  many 
respects  it  is  not  possible,  to  conjecture  the 
manner  or  the  time  in  which  this  work  was  done ; 


ILLUSTRATIVE:   MOUNTAINS.  85 

but  it  is  deeply  necessary  for  all  men  to  consider 
the  magnificence  of  the  accomplished  purpose, 
and  the  depth  of  the  wisdom  and  love  which  are 
manifested  in  the  ordinances  of  the  hills.  For 
observe,  in  order  to  bring  the  world  into  the 
form  which  it  now  bears,  it  was  not  mere  sculp- 
ture that  was  needed ;  the  mountains  could  not 
stand  for  a  day  unless  they  were  formed  of  mate- 
rials altogether  different  from  those  which  con- 
stitute the  lower  hills,  and  the  surfaces  of  the 
valleys.  A  harder  substance  had  to  be  prepared 
for  every  mountain  chain,  yet  not  so  hard  but 
that  it  might  be  capable  of  crumbling  down  into 
earth  fit  to  nourish  the  Alpine  forest,  and  the 
Alpine  flower ;  not  so  hard  but  that  in  the  midst 
of  the  utmost  majesty  of  its  enthroned  strength 
there  should  be  seen  on  it  the  seal  of  death,  and 
the  writing  of  the  same  sentence  that  had  gone 
forth  against  the  human  frame,  "  Dust  thou  art, 
and  unto  dust  shalt  thou  return."  And  with  this 
perishable  substance  the  most  majestic  forms 
were  to  be  framed  that  were  consistent  with  the 


86  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

safety  of  man ;  and  the  peak  was  to  be  lifted  and 
the  cliff  rent,  as  high  and  as  steeply  as  was  pos- 
sible, in  order  yet  to  permit  the  shepherd  to  feed 
his  flocks  upon  the  slopes,  and  the  cottage  to 
nestle  beneath  their  shadow.  And  observe,  two 
distinct  ends  were  to  be  accomplished  in  doing 
this.  It  was,  indeed,  absolutely  necessary  that 
such  eminences  should  be  created,  in  order  to 
fit  the  earth  in  any  wise  for  human  habitation; 
for  without  mountains  the  air  could  not  be  puri- 
fied, nor  the  flowing  of  the  rivers  sustained,  and 
the  earth  must  have  become  for  the  most  part 
plain,  or  stagnant  marsh.  But  the  feeding  of  the 
\  rivers  and  the  purifying  of  the  winds,  are  the  least 
;  of  the  services  appointed  to  the  hills.  To  fill  the 
\  thirst  of  the  human  heart  for  the  beauty  of  God's 
working  —  to  startle  its  lethargy  with  the  deep 
and  pure  agitation  of  astonishment,  —  are  their 
higher  missions.  They  are  as  a  great  and  noble 
architecture,  first  giving  shelter,  comfort,  and 
rest;  and  covered  also  with  mighty  sculpture 
and  painted  legend.     It  is  impossible  to  examine, 


ILLUSTRATIVE:  MOUNTAINS.  87 

in  their  connected  system,  the  features  of  even 
the  most  ordinary  mountain  scenery,  without  con- 
cluding that  it  has  been  prepared  in  order  to 
unite  as  far  as  possible,  and  in  the  closest  com- 
pass, every  means  of  delighting  and  sanctifying 
the  heart  of  man  :  "  as  far  as  possibU"  —  that  is, 
as  far  as  is  consistent  with  the  fulfilment  of  the 
sentence  of  condemnation  on  the  whole  earth. 
Death  must  be  upon  the  hills ;  and  the  cruelty 
of  the  tempests  smite  them,  and  the  briar  and 
thorn  spring  up  upon  them ;  but  they  so  smite  as 
to  bring  their  rocks  into  the  fairest  forms,  and  so 
spring  as  to  make  the  very  desert  blossom  as  the 
rose.  Even  among  our  own  hills  of  Scotland  and 
Cumberland,  though  often  too  barren  to  be  per- 
fectly beautiful,  and  always  too  low  to  be  per- 
fectly sublime,  it  is  strange  how  many  deep 
sources  of  delight  are  gathered  into  the  compass 
of  their  glens  and  vales ;  and  how,  down  to  the 
most  secret  cluster  of  their  far-away  flowers,  and 
the  idlest  leap  of  their  straying  streamlets,  the 
whole  heart  of  Nature  seems  thirsting  to  give, 


88  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

and  still  to  give,  shedding  forth  her  everlasting 
beneficence  with  a  profusion  so  patient,  so  pas- 
sionate, that  our  utmost  observance  and  thank- 
fulness are  but,  at  last,  neglects  of  her  nobleness, 
and  apathy  to  her  love.  But  among  the  true 
mountains  of  the  greater  orders,  the  Divine 
purpose  of  appeal  at  once  to  all  the  faculties  of 
the  human  spirit  becomes  still  more  manifest. 
Inferior  hills  ordinarily  interrupt,  in  some  degree, 
the  richness  of  the  valleys  at  their  feet ;  the  gray 
downs  of  southern  England  and  treeless  coteaux 
of  central  France,  and  gray  swells  of  Scottish 
moor,  whatever  peculiar  charm  they  may  possess 
in  themselves,  are  at  least  destitute  of  those 
which  belong  to  the  woods  and  fields  of  the  low- 
lands. But  the  great  mountains  lift  the  lowlands 
on  their  sides.  Let  the  reader  imagine  first  the 
appearance  of  the  most  varied  plain  of  some 
richly  Cultivated  country;  let  him  imagine  it 
dark  with  graceful  woods,  and  soft  with  deepest 
pastures ;  let  him  fill  the  space  of  it,  to  the 
utmost  horizon,  with  innumerable  and  changeful 


ILLUSTRATIVE:  MOUNTAINS.  89 

incidents  of  scenery  and  life ;  leading  pleasant 
streamlets  through  its  meadows,  strewing  clusters 
of  cottages  beside  their  banks,  tracing  sweet  foot- 
paths through  its  avenues,  and  animating  its 
fields  with  happy  flocks,  and  slow  wandering 
spots  of  cattle;  and  when  he  has  wearied  him- 
self with  endless  imagining,  and  left  no  space 
without  some  loveliness  of  its  own,  let  him  con- 
ceive all  this  great  plain,  with  its  infinite  treas- 
ures of  natural  beauty,  and  happy  human  life, 
gathered  up  in  God's  hands  from  one  edge  of 
the  horizon  to  the  other,  like  a  woven  garment, 
and  shaken  into  deep  falling  folds,  as  the  robes 
droop  from  a  king's  shoulders ;  all  its  bright 
rivers  leaping  into  cataracts  along  the  hollows 
of  its  fall,  and  all  its  forests  rearing  themselves 
aslant  against  its  slopes,  as  a  rider  rears  himself 
back  when  his  horse  plunges,  and  all  its  villages 
nestling  themselves  into  the  new  windings  of  its 
glens,  and  all  its  pastures  thrown  into  steep  waves 
of  greensward,  dashed  with  dew  along  the  edges 
of  their  folds,  and  sweeping  down  into  endless 


90  FRONDES  ACRES TES. 

slopes,  with  a  cloud  here  and  there  lying  quietly, 
half  on  the  grass,  half  in  the  air,  —  and  he  will 
have  as  yet,  in  all  this  lifted  world,  only  the  foun- 
dation of  one  of  the  great  Alps.  And  whatever 
is  lovely  in  the  lowland  scenery,  becomes  lovelier 
in  this  change ;  the  trees  which  grew  heavily  and 
stiffly  from  the  level  line  of  plain,  assume  strange 
curves  of  strength  and  grace  as  they  bend  them- 
selves against  the  mountain  side;  they  breathe 
more  freely  and  toss  their  branches  more  care- 
lessly as  each  climbs  higher,  looking  to. the  dear 
light  above  the  topmost  leaves  of  its  brother 
tree ;  the  flowers  which  on  the  arable  plain  fall 
before  the  plough,  now  find  out  for  themselves 
unapproachable  places  where  year  by  year  they 
gather  into  happier  fellowship,  and  fear  no  evil ; 
and  the  streams  which  in  the  level  land  crept  in 
dark  eddies  by  unwholesome  banks,  now  move 
in  showers  of  silver,  and  are  clothed  with  rain- 
bows, and  bring  health  and  life  wherever  the 
glance  of  their  waves  can  reach.  .  ,  . 

It  may  not,  therefore,  be  altogether  profitless 


ILLUSTRATIVE :  MOUNTAINS.  91 

or  unnecessary  to  review  briefly  the  nature  of 
the  three  great  offices  which  mountain  ranges 
are  appointed  to  fulfil,  in  order  to  preserve  the 
health  and  increase  the  happiness  of  mankind. 
Their  first  use  is,  of  course,  to  give  motion  to 
water.  Every  fountain  and  river,  fi-om  the  inch- 
deep  streamlet  that  crosses  the  village  lane  in 
trembling  clearness,  to  the  massy  and  silent 
march  of  the  everlasting  multitude  of  waters  in 
Amazon  or  Ganges,  owe  their  play,  and  purity, 
and  power,  to  the  ordained  elevations  of  the 
earth.  Gentle  or  steep,  extended  or  abrupt, 
some  determined  slope  of  the  earth's  surface 
is  of  course  necessary  before  any  wave  can  so 
much  as  overtake  one  sedge  in  its  pilgrimage; 
and  how  seldom  do  we  enough  consider,  as  we 
walk  beside  the  margins  of  our  pleasant  brooks, 
how  beautiful  and  wonderful  is  that  ordinance, 
of  which  every  blade  of  grass  that  waves  in 
their  clear  water  is  a  perpetual  sign  —  that  the 
dew  and  rain  fallen  on  the  face  of  the  earth 
shall   find   no   resting-place;   shall   find,  on   the 


92  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

contrary,  fixed  channels  traced  for  them  from 
the  ravines  of  the  central  crests  down  which 
they  roar,  in  sudden  ranks  of  foam,  to  the  dark 
hollows  beneath  the  banks  of  lowland  pasture, 
round  which  they  must  circle  slowly  among  the 
stems  and  beneath  the  leaves  of  the  lilies ;  paths 
prepared  for  them  by  which,  at  some  appointed 
rate  of  journey,  they  must  evermore  descend, 
sometimes  slow,  and  sometimes  swift,  but  never 
pausing;  the  daily  portion  of  the  earth  they 
have  to  glide  over  marked  for  them  at  each 
successive  sunrise,  the  place  which  has  known 
them  knowing  them  no  more,  and  the  gate- 
ways of  guarding  mountains  opened  for  them 
in  cleft  and  chasm,  none  letting  them  in  their 
pilgrimage;  and,  from  afar  off,  the  great  heart 
of  the  sea  calling  them  to  itself !  "  Deep 
calleth  unto  deep."  I  know  not  which  of  the 
two  is '  the  more  wonderful,  —  that  calm,  gra- 
dated, invisible  slope  of  the  champaign  land, 
which  gives  motion  to  the  stream;  or  that 
passage  cloven  for  it  through  the  ranks  of  hill. 


ILLUSTRATIVE :  MOUNTAINS.  93 

which,  necessary  for  the  health  of  the  land 
immediately  around  them,  would  yet,  unless  so 
supematurally  divided,  have  fatally  intercepted 
the  flow  of  the  waters  from  far-off  countries. 
When  did  the  great  spirit  of  the  river  first 
knock  at  these  adamantine  gates?  When  did 
the  porter  open  to  it,  and  cast  his  keys  away 
forever,  lapped  in  whirling  sand?  I  am  not 
satisfied  —  no  one  should  be  satisfied  —  with 
that  vague  answer,  The  river  cut  its  way.  Not 
so.  The  river  found  its  way.  ^  I  do  not  see 
that  rivers  in  their  own  strength  can  do  much 
in  cutting  their  way ;  they  are  nearly  as  apt  to 
choke  their  channels  up  as  to  carve  them  out. 
Only  give  a  river  some  little  sudden  power  in 
a  valley,  and  see  how  it  will  use  it.  Cut  itself 
a  bed?  Not  so,  by  any  means,  but  fill  up  its 
bed ;  and  look  for  another  in  a  wild,  dissatisfied, 
inconsistent  manner,  —  any  way  rather  than  the 

1  I  attach  great  importance  to  the  remaining  contents  of 
this  passage,  and  have  had  occasion  to  insist  on  them  at 
great  length  in  recent  lectures  at  Oxford. 


94  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

old  one  will  better  please  it;  and  even  if  it  is 
banked  up  and  forced  to  keep  to  the  old  one, 
it  will  not  deepen,  but  do  all  it  can  to  raise  it, 
and  leap  out  of  it.  And  although  wherever 
water  has  a  steep  fall  it  will  swiftly  cut  itself  a 
bed  deep  into  the  rock  or  ground,  it  will  not, 
when  the  rock  is  hard,  cut  a  wider  channel 
than  it  actually  needs;  so  that  if  the  existing 
river  beds,  through  ranges  of  mountains,  had  in 
reality  been  cut  by  the  streams,  they  would  be 
found,  wherever  the  rocks  are  hard,  only  in  the 
form  of  narrow  and  profound  ravines,  like  the 
well-known  channel  of  the  Niagara,  below 
the  fall ;  not  in  that  of  extended  valleys.  And 
the  actual  work  of  true  mountain  rivers,  though 
often  much  greater  in  proportion  to  their  body 
of  water  than  that  of  the  Niagara,  is  quite  in- 
significant when  compared  with  the  area  and 
depth  of  the  valleys  through  which  they  flow ; 
so  that,  although  in  many  cases  it  appears  that 
those  larger  valleys  have  been  excavated  at 
earlier  periods  by  more  powerful  streams,  or  by 


ILLUSTRATIVE :  MOUNTAINS.  9$ 

the  existing  stream  in  a  more  powerful  condi- 
tion, still  the  great  fact  remains  always  equally 
plain,  and  equally  admirable,  that,  whatever  the 
nature  and  duration  of  the  agencies  employed, 
the  earth  was  so  shaped  at  first  as  to  direct 
the  currents  of  its  rivers  in  the  manner  most 
healthy  and  convenient  for  man.  The  valley 
of  the  Rhone  may  have  been  in  great  part 
excavated,  in  early  times,  by  torrents  a  thou- 
sand times  larger  than  the  Rhone ;  but  it  could 
not  have  been  excavated  at  all,  unless  the 
mountains  had  been  thrown  at  first  into  two 
chains,  by  which  the  torrents  were  set  to  work 
in  a  given  direction.  And  it  is  easy  to  con- 
ceive how,  under  any  less  beneficent  disposi- 
tions of  their  masses  of  hill,  the  continents  of 
the  earth  might  either  have  been  covered  with 
enormous  lakes,  as  parts  of  North  America 
actually  are  covered ;  or  have  become  wilder- 
nesses of  pestiferous  marsh ;  or  lifeless  plains, 
upon  which  the  water  would  have  dried  as  it 
fell,  leaving  them  for  great  part   of  the   year 


96  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

desert.  Such  districts  do  exist,  and  exist  in 
vastness;  the  whole  earth  is  not  prepared  for 
the  habitation  of  man;  only  certain  small  por- 
tions are  prepared  for  him,  —  the  houses,  as  it 
were,  of  the  human  race,  from  which  they  are 
to  look  abroad  upon  the  rest  of  the  world;  not 
to  wonder  or  complain  that  it  is  not  all  house, 
but  to  be  grateful  for  the  kindness  of  the 
admirable  building,  in  the  house  itself,  as  com- 
pared with  the  rest.  It  would  be  as  absurd 
to  think  it  an  evil  that  all  the  world  is  not  fit 
for  us  to  inhabit,  as  to  think  it  an  evil  that 
the  globe  is  no  larger  than  it  is.  As  much  as 
we  shall  ever  need  is  evidently  assigned  to  us 
for  our  dwelling-place ;  the  rest,  covered  with 
rolling  waves  or  drifting  sands,  fretted  with  ice 
or  crested  with  fire,  is  set  before  us  for  con- 
templation in  an  uninhabitable  magnificence. 
And  that  part  which  we  are  enabled  to  inhabit 
owes  its  fitness  for  human  life  chiefly  to  its 
mountain  ranges,  which,  throwing  the  super- 
fluous rain  off"  as  it   falls,  collect   it  in  streams 


ILLUSTRATIVE:  MOUNTAINS.  97 

or  lakes,  and  guide  it  into  given  places,  and  in 
given  directions ;  so  that  men  can  build  their 
cities  in  the  midst  of  fields  which  they  know 
will  be  always  fertile,  and  establish  the  lines 
of  their  commerce  upon  streams  which  will  not 
fail. 

Nor  is  this  giving  of  motion  to  water  to  be 
considered  as  confined  only  to  the  surface  of 
the  earth.  A  no  less  important  function  of  the 
hills  is  in  directing  the  flow  of  the  fountains  and 
springs  from  subterranean  reservoirs.  There  is 
no  miraculous  springing  up  of  water  out  of  the 
ground  at  our  feet;  but  every  fountain  and  well 
is  supplied  from  reservoirs  among  the  hills,  so 
placed  as  to  involve  some  slight  fall  or  pressure 
enough  to  secure  the  constant  flowing  of  the 
stream ;  and  the  incalculable  blessing  of  the 
power  given  to  us,  in  most  valleys,  of  reaching 
by  excavation  some  point  whence  the  water  will 
rise  to  the  surface  of  the  ground  in  perennial 
flow,  is  entirely  owing  to  the  concave  disposi- 
tions of  the  beds  of  clay  or  rock  raised  from 


98  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

beneath  the  bosom  of  the  valley  into  ranks  of 
enclosing  hills. 

The  second  great  use  of  mountains  is  to 
maintain  a  constant  change  in  the  currents  and 
nature  of  the  air.  Such  change  would,  of 
course,  have  been  partly  caused  by  difference 
in  soil  and  vegetation,  even  if  the  earth  had 
been  level;  but  to  a  far  less  extent  than  it  is 
now  by  the  chains  of  hills  which  —  exposing  on 
one  side  their  masses  of  rock  to  the  full  heat 
of  the  sun,  (increased  by  the  angle  at  which  the 
rays  strike  on  the  slope,)  and  on  the  other  cast- 
ing a  soft  shadow  for  leagues  over  the  plains  at 
their,  feet  —  divide  the  earth  not  only  into  dis- 
tricts, but  into  climates;  and  cause  perpetual 
currents  of  air  to  traverse  their  passes  in  a 
thousand  different  states;  moistening  it  with 
the  spray  of  their  waterfalls,  sucking  it  down 
and  beating  it  hither  and  thither  in  the  pools 
of  their  torrents,  closing  it  within  clefts  and 
caves,  where  the  sunbeams  never  reach,  till  it 
is  as  cold  as  November  mists;  then  sending  it 


.      ILLUSTRATIVE:  MOUNTAINS.  99 

forth  again  to  breathe  lightly  across  the  slopes 
of  velvet  fields,  or  to  be  scorched  among  sun- 
burnt shales  and  grassless  crags ;  then  drawing 
it  back  in  moaning  swirls  through  clefts  of  ice, 
and  up  into  dewy  wreaths  above  the  snow- 
fields;  then  piercing  it  with  strange  electric 
darts  and  flashes  of  mountain  fire,  and  tossing 
it  high  in  fantastic  storm-cloud,  as  the  dried 
grass  is  tossed  by  the  mower,  only  suffering  it 
to  depart  at  last,  when  chastened  and  pure,  to 
refresh  the  faded  air  of  the  far-off  plains. 

The  third  great  use  of  mountains  is  to  cause 
perpetual  change  in  the  soils  of  the  earth. 
Without  such  provision  the  ground  under  culti- 
vation would  in  a  series  of  years  become  ex- 
hausted, and  require  to  be  upturned  laboriously 
by  the  hand  of  man.  But  the  elevations  of  the 
earth's  surface  provide  for  it  a  perpetual  reno- 
vation. The  higher  moimtains  suffer  their  sum- 
mits to  be  broken  into  fragments,  and  to  be 
cast  down  in  sheets  of  massy  rock,  full,  as  we 
shall  see  presently,  of  every  subotance  necessary 


lOO  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

for  the  nourishment  of  plants ;  these  fallen  frag- 
ments are  again  broken  by  frost,  and  ground  by 
torrents,  into  various  conditions  of  sand  and 
clay  —  materials  which  are  distributed  perpetu- 
ally by  the  streams  farther  and  farther  from 
the  mountain's  base.  Every  shower  that  swells 
the  rivulets  enables  their  waters  to  carry  certain 
portions  of  earth  into  new  positions,  and  ex- 
poses new  banks  of  ground  to  be  mined  in 
their  turn.  That  turbid  foaming  of  the  angry 
water,  —  that  tearing  down  of  bank  and  rock 
along  the  flanks  of  its  fury,  —  are  no  disturb- 
ances of  the  kind  course  of  nature;  they  are 
beneficent  operations  of  laws  necessary  to  the 
existence  of  man,  and  to  the  beauty  of  the 
earth.  The  process  is  continued  more  gently, 
but  not  less  effectively,  over  all  the  surface  of 
the  lower  undulating  country;  and  each  filter- 
ing thread  of  summer  rain  which  trickles 
through  the  short  turf  of  the  uplands  is  bear- 
ing its  own  appointed  burden  of  earth  to  be 
thrown  down  on  some  new  natural  garden  in 
the  dingles  beneath. 


ILLUSTRATIVE:  MOUNTAINS.         loi 

I  have  not  spoken  of  the  local  and  peculiar 
utilities  of  mountains.  I  do  not  count  the 
benefit  of  the  supply  of  summer  streams  from 
the  moors  of  the  higher  ranges,  —  of  the  vari- 
ous medicinal  plants  which  are  nested  among 
their  rocks,  —  of  the  delicate  pasturage  which 
they  furnish  for  cattle,  —  of  the  forests  in  which 
they  bear  timber  for  shipping,  —  the  stones  they 
supply  for  building,  or  the  ores  of  metal  which 
they  collect  into  spots  open  to  discovery,  and 
easy  for  working.  All  these  benefits  are  of  a 
secondary  or  a  limited  nature.  But  the  three 
great  functions  which  I  have  just  described, 
those  of  giving  motion  and  change  to  water, 
air,  and  earth,  are  indispensable  to  human  ex- 
istence; they  are  operations  to  be  regarded 
with  as  full  a  depth  of  gratitude  as  the  laws 
which  bid  the  tree  bear  fruit,  or  the  seed 
multiply  itself  in  the  earth.  And  thus  those 
desolate  and  threatening  ranges  of  dark  moun- 
tain, which  in  nearly  all  ages  of  the  world 
men  have  looked  upon  with  aversion,  or  with 


102  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

terror,  and  shrunk  back  from  as  if  they  were 
haunted  by  perpetual  images  of  death,  are  in 
reality  sources  of  life  and  happiness  far  fuller 
and  more  beneficent  than  all  the  bright  fruit- 
fulness  of  the  plain.  The  valleys  only  feed ; 
the  mountains  feed,  and  guard,  and  strengthen 
us.  We  take  our  idea  of  fearlessness  and  sub- 
limity alternately  from  the  mountains  and  the 
sea;  but  we  associate  them  unjustly.  The 
sea-wave,  with  all  its  beneficence,  is  yet  de- 
vouring and  terrible ;  but  the  silent  wave  of 
the  blue  mountain  is  lifted  towards  heaven  in 
a  stillness  of  perpetual  mercy;  and  the  one 
surge,  unfathomable  in  its  darkness,  the  other 
unshaken  in  its  faithfulness,  forever  bear  the 
seal  of  their  appointed  symbolism :  — 

"Thy  righteousness  is  like  the  great  moun- 
tains ; 

"Hhy  judgments  are  a  great  deep." 

33.  Mountains  are  to  the  rest  of  the  body 
of  the  earth,  what  violent   muscular   action  is 


ILLUSTRATIVE:  MOUNTAINS.         103 

to  the  body  of  man.  The  muscles  and  tendons 
of  its  anatomy  are,  in  the  mountain,  brought 
out  with  force  and  convulsive  energy,  full  of 
expression,  passion,  and  strength ;  the  plains 
and  the  lower  hills  are  the  repose  and  the 
effortless  motion  of  the  frame,  when  its  mus- 
cles lie  dormant  and  concealed  beneath  the 
lines  of  its  beauty,  —  yet  ruling  those  lines  in 
their  every  undulation.  This  then  is  the  first 
grand  principle  of  the  truth  of  the  earth.  The 
spirit  of  the  hills  is  action,  that  of  the  low- 
lands repose ;  and  between  these  there  is  to 
be  found  every  variety  of  motion  and  rest, 
from  the  inactive  plain,  sleeping  like  the  firma- 
ment, with  cities  for  stars,  to  the  fiery  peaks, 
which,  with  heaving  bosoms  and  exulting  limbs, 
with  the  clouds  drifting'  like  hair  from  their 
bright  foreheads,  lift  up  their  Titan  heads  to 
Heaven,  saying,  "  I  Hve  forever." 

34.  Where    they    are,^    they    seem    to    form 

1  Passage  written  after  I  had  got  by  some  years  cooler 
and  wiser  than  when  I  wrote  No.  33,  describing  however 


I04  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

the  world ;  no  mere  bank  of  a  river  here,  or  of 
a  lane  there,  peeping  out  among  the  hedges 
or  forests,  but  from  the  lowest  valley  to  the 
highest  clouds,  all  is  theirs,  —  one  adamantine 
dominion  and  rigid  authority  of  rock.  We  yield 
ourselves  to  the  impression  of  their  eternal  un- 
conquerable stubbornness  of  strength;  their 
mass  seems  the  least  yielding,  least  to  be  soft- 
ened, or  in  anywise  dealt  with  by  external 
force,  of  all  earthly  substance.  And  behold, 
as  we  look  further  into  it,  it  is  all  touched  and 
troubled,  like  waves  by  a  summer  breeze;  rip- 
pled far  more  delicately  than  seas  or  lakes  are 
rippled ;  they  only  undulate  along  their  surfaces 
—  this  rock  trembles  through  its  every  fibre, 
like  the  chords  of  an  Eolian  harp,  like  the  still- 
est air  of  spring,  with  the  echoes  of  a  child's 
voice.  Into  the  heart  of  all  those  great  moun- 
tains, through  every  tossing  of  their  boundless 
crests,   and   deep   beneath   all    their    unfathom- 

the  undulation  of  the  gneiss  rocks,  which,  "  where  they  are, 
seem  to  form  the  world,"  in  terms  more  fanciful  than  I  now  like. 


ILLUSTRATIVE :   MOUNTAINS,  105 

able  defiles,  flows  that  strange  quivering  of 
their  substance.  Other  and  weaker  things 
seem  to  express  their  subjection  to  an  Infinite 
Power  only  by  momentary  terrors  :  as  the  weeds 
bow  down  before  the  feverish  wind,  and  the 
sound  of  the  going  in  the  tops  of  the  taller 
trees  passes  on  before  the  clouds,  and  the  fit- 
ful opening  of  pale  spaces  on  the  dark  water, 
as  if  some  invisible  hand  were  casting  dust 
abroad  upon  it,  gives  warning  of  the  anger 
that  is  to  come,  we  may  well  imagine  that 
there  is  a  fear  passing  upon  the  grass,  and 
leaves,  and  waters,  at  the  presence  of  some 
great  spirit  commissioned  to  let  the  tempest 
loose ;  but  the  terror  passes,  and  their  sweet 
rest  is  perpetually  restored  to  the  pastures  and 
the  waves.  Not  so  to  the  mountains.  They, 
which  at  first  seem  strengthened  beyond  the 
dread  of  any  violence  or  change,  are  yet  also 
ordained  to  bear  upon  them  the  symbol  of  a 
perpetual  fear.  The  tremor  which  fades  firom 
the    soft    lake  and   gliding    river    is    sealed    to 


Io6  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

all  eternity  upon  the  rock;  and  while  things 
that  pass  visibly  from  birth  to  death  may  some- 
times forget  their  feebleness,  the  mountains 
are  made  to  possess  a  perpetual  memorial  of 
their  infancy  —  that  infancy  which  the  prophet 
saw  in  his  vision/  —  "I  beheld  the  earth,  and 
lo,  it  was  without  form,  and  void;  and  the 
heavens,  and  they  had  no  light.  I  beheld 
the  mountains,  and  lo,  they  trembled,  and  all 
the  hills  moved  lightly" 

35.  The  longer  I  stayed  among  the  Alps, 
and  the  more  closely  I  examined  them,  the 
more  I  was  struck  by  the  one  broad  fact  of 
there  being  a  vast  Alpine  plateau,  or  mass  of 
elevated  land,  upon  which  nearly  all  the  highest 
peaks  stood  Hke  children  set  upon  a  table,  re- 
moved, in  most  cases,  far  back  from  the  edge 

1  Utter  misinterpretation  of  the  passage.  It  is  the  old 
age,  not  the  childhood  of  earth,  which  Jeremiah  describes 
in  this  passage.  See  its  true  interpretation  in  "  Fors  Clavi- 
gera,"  Letter  XLVI. 


ILLUSTRATIVE:  MOUNTAINS.         107 

of  the  plateau,  —  as  if  for  fear  of  their  falling; 
while  the  most  majestic  scenes  in  the  Alps  are 
produced,  not  so  much  by  any  violation  of 
this  law,  as  by  one  of  the  great  peaks  having 
apparently  walked  to  the  edge  of  the  table  to 
look  over,  and  thus  showing  itself  suddenly 
above  the  valley  in  its  full  height.  This  is 
the  case  with  the  Wetterhom  and  Eiger  at 
Grindelwald,  and  with  the  Grande  Jorasse  above 
the  Col  de  Ferret.  But  the  raised  bank  or 
table  is  always  intelligibly  in  existence,  even 
in  these  apparently  exceptional  cases ;  and  for 
the  most  part,  the  great  peaks  are  not  allowed 
to  come  to  the  edge  of  it,  but  remain  like  the 
keeps  of  castles  far  withdrawn,  surrounded, 
league  beyond  league,  by  comparatively  level 
fields  of  mountain,  over  which  the  lapping 
sheets  of  glacier  writhe  and  flow,  foaming 
about  the  feet  of  the  dark  central  crests  like 
the  surf  of  an  enormous  sea-breaker  hurled 
over  a  rounded  rock,  and  islanding  some  frag- 
ment of  it  in  the  midst.    And  the  result  of  this 


Io8  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

arrangement  is  a  kind  of  division  of  the  whole 
of  Switzerland  into  an  upper  and  lower  moun- 
tain world,  ^  the  lower  world  consisting  of  rich 
valleys,  bordered  by  steep,  but  easily  accessible, 
wooded  banks  of  mountain,  more  or  less  di- 
vided by  ravines,  through  which  glimpses  are 
caught  of  the  higher  Alps ;  the  upper  world, 
reached  after  the  first  banks  of  3000  or  4000 
feet  in  height  have  been  surmounted,  consist- 
ing of  comparatively  level  but  most  desolate 
tracts  of  moor  and  rock,  half  covered  by 
glacier,  and  stretching  to  the  feet  of  the  true 
pinnacles  of  the  chain.  It  can  hardly  be  nec- 
essary to  point  out  the  perfect  wisdom  and 
kindness  of  this  arrangement,  as  a  provision 
for  the  safety  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  high 
mountain  regions.  If  the  great  peaks  rose  at 
once  from  the  deepest  valleys,  every  stone 
which  was  struck  from  their  pinnacles,  and 
every  snow-wreath  which  slipped  from  their 
ledges,  would  descend  at  once  upon  the  in- 
habitable   ground,   over  which    no    year  would 


ILLUSTRATIVE:  MOUNTAINS.         109 

pass  without  recording  some  calamity  of  earth- 
slip  or  avalanche ;  while  in  the  course  of  their 
fall  both  the  stones  and  the  snow  would  strip 
the  woods  from  the  hillsides,  leaving  only 
naked  channels  of  destruction  where  there  are 
now  the  sloping  meadow  and  the  chestnut 
glade.  Besides  this,  the  masses  of  snow,  cast 
down  at  once  into  the  warmer  air,  would  all 
melt  rapidly  in  the  spring,  causing  furious 
inundation  of  every  great  river  for  a  month  or 
six  weeks.  The  snow  being  then  all  thawed, 
except  what  lay  upon  the  highest  peaks  in 
regions  of  nearly  perpetual  frost,  the  rivers 
would  be  supplied  during  the  summer  only  by 
fountains,  and  the  feeble  tricklings  on  sunny 
days  from  the  high  snows.  The  Rhone,  under 
such  circumstances,  would  hardly  be  larger, 
in  summer,  than  the  Severn,  and  many  Swiss 
valleys  would  be  left  almost  without  moisture. 
All  these  calamities  are  prevented  by  the  pe- 
culiar Alpine  structure  which  has  been  de- 
scribed.    The    broken    rocks    and    the    sliding 


no  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

snow  of  the  high  peaks,  instead  of  being 
dashed  at  once  to  the  vales,  are  caught  upon 
the  desolate  shelves,  or  shoulders,  which  every- 
where surround  the  central  crests.  The  soft 
banks  which  terminate  these  shelves,  traversed 
by  no  falling  fragments,  clothe  themselves  with 
richest  wood,  while  the  masses  of  snow  heaped 
upon  the  ledge  above  them,  in  a  climate  neither 
so  warm  as  to  thaw  them  quickly  in  the  spring, 
nor  so  cold  as  to  protect  them  from  all  the 
power  of  the  summer  sun,  either  form  them- 
selves into  glaciers,  or  remain  in  slowly  wasting 
fields  even  to  the  close  of  the  year,  —  in  either 
case  supplying  constant,  abundant,  and  regular 
streams  to  the  villages  and  pastures  beneath, 
and  to  the  rest  of  Europe,  noble  and  navigable 
rivers. 

Now,  that  such  a  structure  is  the  best  and  wis- 
est possible,^  is  indeed  sufficient  reason  for  its  ex- 
istence, and  to  many  people  it  may  seem  useless 

1  Of  course  I  had  seen  every  other  tried  before  giving  this 
favorable  judgment 


ILLUSTRATIVE:  MOUNTAINS.         iii 

to  question  farther  respecting  its  origin.  But  I 
can  hardly  conceive  any  one  standing  face  to 
face  with  one  of  these  towers  of  central  rock, 
and  yet  not  also  asking  himself,  Is  this  indeed 
the  actual  first  work  of  the  Divine  Master,  on 
which  I  gaze?  Was  the  great  precipice  shaped 
by  His  finger,  as  Adam  was  shaped  out  of  the 
dust?  Were  its  clefts  and  ledges  carved  upon 
it  by  its  Creator,  as  the  letters  were  on  the 
tables  of  the  law,  and  was  it  thus  left  to  bear  its 
eternal  testimony  to  His  beneficence  among 
these  clouds  of  Heaven  ?  Or  is  it  the  descend- 
ant of  a  long  race  of  mountains,  existing  under 
appointed  laws  of  birth  and  endurance,  death 
and  decrepitude?  There  can  be  no  doubt  as 
to  the  answer.  The  rock  itself  answers  audibly 
by  the  murmur  of  some  falling  stone  or  rending 
pinnacle.  It  is  not  as  it  was  once.  Those 
waste  leagues  around  its  feet  are  loaded  with 
the  wrecks  of  what  it  was.  On  these  perhaps, 
of  all  mountains,  the  characters  of  decay  are 
written  most  clearly;  around  these  are  spread 


112  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

most  gloomily  the  memorials  of  their  pride,  and 
the  signs  of  their  humiliation. 

What  then  were  they  once  ?  The  only  answer 
is  yet  again  —  "  Behold  the  cloud  ! " 

36.  There  are  many  spots  among  the  inferior 
ridges  of  the  Alps,  such  as  the  Col  de  Ferret, 
the  Col  d'Anterne,  and  the  associated  ranges  of 
the  Buet,  which,  though  commanding  prospects 
of  great  nobleness,  are  themselves  very  nearly 
types  of  all  that  is  most  painful  to  the  human 
mind.  Vast  wastes  of  mountain  ground,^  cov- 
ered here  and  there  with  dull  gray  grass  or  moss, 
but  breaking  continually  into  black  banks  of 
shattered  slate,  all  glistening  and  sodden  with 
slow  tricklings  of  clogged,  incapable  streams; 
the  snow-water  oozing  through  them  in  a  cold 
sweat,  and  spreading  itself  in  creeping  stains 
among   their  dust ;    ever  and    anon   a   shaking 

1  This  is  a  fourth  volume  passage,  —  and  I  will  venture  to 
say  of  it,  as  Albert  Diirer,  when  he  was  pleased  with  his 
work  —  that  for  what  it  has  to  do,  it  cannot  be  much  better 
done.    It  is  a  study  on  the  Col  de  Bon  Homme. 


ILLUSTRATIVE:  MOUNTAINS.         113 

here  and  there,  and  a  handful  or  two  of  their 
particles  or  flakes  trembling  down,  one  sees  not 
why,  into  more  total  dissolution,  leaving  a  few 
jagged  teeth,  like  the  edges  of  knives  eaten  away 
by  vinegar,  projecting,  through  the  half-dis- 
lodged mass,  from  the  inner  rock ;  keen  enough 
to  cut  the  hand  or  foot  that  rests  on  them,  yet 
crumbling  as  they  wound,  and  soon  sinking 
again  into  the  smooth,  sHppery,  glutinous  heap ; 
looking  like  a  beach  of  black  scales  of  dead  fish 
cast  ashore  from  a  poisonous  sea,  and  sloping 
away  into  foul  ravines,  branched  down  im- 
measurable slopes  of  barrenness,  where  the 
winds  howl  and  wander  continually,  and  the 
snow  hes  in  wasted  and  sorrowful  fields  covered 
with  sooty  dust,  that  collects  in  streaks  and 
stains  at  the  bottom  of  all  its  thawing  ripples. 

I  know  of  no  other  scenes  so  appalling  as 
these  in  storm,  or  so  woful  in  sunshine.  Where, 
however,  these  same  rocks  exist  in  more 
favorable  positions  —  that  is  to  say,  in  gentler 
banks  and   at    lower  elevations  —  they  form  a 


114  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

ground  for  the  most  luxuriant  vegetation ;  and 
the  valleys  of  Savoy  owe  to  them  some  of  their 
loveliest  soUtudes  —  exquisitely  rich  pastures, 
interspersed  with  arable  and  orchard  land,  and 
shaded  by  groves  of  walnut  and  cherrj'.  Scenes 
of  this  kind,  and  of  that  just  described,  so  singu- 
larly opposed,  and  apparently  brought  together 
as  foils  to  each  other,  are  however  peculiar  to 
certain  beds  of  the  slaty  coherents,  which  are 
both  vast  in  elevation,  and  easy  of  destruction. 
In  Wales  and  Scotland  the  same  groups  of 
rocks  possess  far  greater  hardness,  while  they 
attain  less  elevation;  and  the  result  is  a  totally 
different  aspect  of  scenery.  The  severity  of 
the  climate,  and  the  comparative  durableness 
of  the  rock,  forbid  the  rich  vegetation;  but 
the  exposed  summits,  though  barren,  are  not 
subject  to  laws  of  destruction  so  rapid  and  fear- 
ful as  in  Switzerland,  and  the  natural  color  of 
the  rock  is  oftener  developed  in  the  purples 
and  grays  which,  mingled  with  the  heather, 
form  the  principal  elements  of  the   deep  and 


ILLUSTRATIVE:  MOUNTAINS,  115 

beautiful  distant  blue  of  the  British  hills.  Their 
gentler  mountain  streams  also  permit  the  beds  of 
rock  to  remain  in  firm,  though  fantastic,  forms 
along  their  banks,  and  the  gradual  action  of  the 
cascades  and  eddies  upon  the  slaty  cleavage 
produces  many  pieces  of  foreground  scenery  to 
which  higher  hills  can  present  no  parallel. 

37.  Unlike  Chamouni  Aiguilles,  there  is  no 
aspect  of  destruction  about  the  Matterhom  cliffs. 
They  are  not  torn  remnants  of  separating 
spires,  yielding,  flake  by  flake,  and  band  by 
band,  to  the  continual  process  of  decay.  They 
are,  on  the  contrary,  an  unaltered  monument, 
seemingly  sculptured  long  ago,  the  huge  walls 
retaining  yet  the  forms  into  which  they  were 
first  engraven,  and  standing  like  an  Egyptian 
temple ;  —  deUcately  fix)nted,  softly  colored, 
the  suns  of  uncounted  ages  rising  and  falling 
upon  it  continually,  but  still  casting  the  same 
line  of  shadows  from  east  to  west ;  still,  century 
after  century,  touching  the  same  purple  stains 


Il6  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

on  the  lotus  pillars ;  while  the  desert  sand  ebbs 
and  flows  about  their  feet,  as  those  autumn 
leaves  of  rock  lie  heaped  and  weak  about  the 
base  of  the  Cervin. 

Is  not  this  a  strange  type  in  the  very  heart 
and  height  of  these  mysterious  Alps  —  these 
wrinkled  hills  in  their  snowy,  cold,  gray-haired 
old  age,  at  first  so  silent,  then,  as  we  keep 
quiet  at  their  feet,  muttering  and  whispering 
to  us  garrulously  in  broken  and  dreaming  fits, 
as  it  were,  about  their  childhood,  —  is  it  not  a 
strange  type  of  the  things  which  "  out  of  weak- 
ness are  made  strong"?  If  one  of  these  little 
flakes  of  mica  sand,  hurried  in  tremulous  span- 
gling along  the  bottom  of  the  ancient  river,  too 
light  to  sink,  too  faint  to  float,  almost  too  small 
for  sight,  could  have  had  a  mind  given  to  it  as 
it  was  at  last  borne  down  with  its  kindred  dust 
into  the  abysses  of  the  stream,  and  laid,  (might 
it  not  have  been  thought?)  for  a  hopeless 
eternity,  in  the  dark  ooze,  the  most  despised, 
forgotten,  and  feeble  of  all  earth's  atoms;  in- 


ILLUSTRATIVE:  MOUNTAINS,  117 

capable  of  any  use  or  change ;  not  fit,  down 
there  in  the  diluvial  darkness,  so  much  as  to 
help  an  earth  wasp  to  build  its  nest,  or  feed 
the  first  fibre  of  a  lichen ;  what  would  it  have 
thought,  had  it  been  told  that  one  day,  knitted 
into  a  strength  as  of  imperishable  iron,  rustless 
by  the  air,  infusible  by  the  flame,  out  of  the 
substance  of  it,  with  its  fellows,  the  axe  of  God 
should  hew  that  Alpine  tower?  —  that  against 
// — poor,  helpless  mica  flake!  —  the  wild  north 
winds  should  rage  in  vain;  beneath  // — low- 
fallen  mica  flake  !  —  the  snowy  hills  should  lie 
bowed  like  flocks  of  sheep,  and  the  kingdoms 
of  the  earth  fade  away  in  unregarded  blue ;  and 
around  // — weak,  wave-drifted  mica  flake  !  —  the 
great  war  of  the  firmament  should  burst  in  thunder 
and  yet  stir  it  not ;  and  the  fiery  arrows  and  angry 
meteors  of  the  night  fall  blunted  back  from  it  into 
the  air ;  and  all  the  stars  in  the  clear  heaven  should 
light,  one  by  one  as  they  rose,  new  cressets  upon 
the  points  of  snow  that  fringed  its  abiding-place 
on  the  imperishable  spire? 


SECTION  VI. 

ILLUSTRATIVE  :    STONES. 

38.  There  are  no  natural  objects  out  of 
which  more  can  be  learned  than  out  of  stones. 
They  seem  to  have  been  created  especially  to 
reward  a  patient  observer.  Nearly  all  other 
objects  in  nature  can  be  seen  to  some  extent 
without  patience,  and  are  pleasant  even  in  be- 
ing half  seen.  Trees,  clouds,  and  rivers  are 
enjoyable  even  by  the  careless;  but  the  stone 
under  his  foot  has,  for  carelessness,  nothing  in 
it  but  stumbhng ;  no  pleasure  is  languidly  to 
be  had  out  of  it,  nor  food,  nor  good  of  any 
kind ;  nothing  but  symbolism  of  the  hard  heart, 
and  the  unfatherly  gift.  And  yet,  do  but  give 
it  some  reverence  and  watchfulness,  and  there 
is  bread  of  thought  in  it,  more  than  in  any 
other  lowly  feature  of  all  the  landscape.  For 
118 


ILLUSTRATIVE:  STONES.  119 

a  stone,  when  it  is  examined,  will  be  found  a 
mountain  in  miniature.  The  fineness  of  Nature's 
work  is  so  great,  that  into  a  single  block,  a  foot 
or  two  in  diameter,  she  can  compress  as  many 
changes  of  form  and  structure,  on  a  small  scale, 
as  she  needs  for  her  mountains  on  a  large  one ; 
and  taking  moss  for  forests,  and  grains  of  crystal 
for  crags,  the  surface  of  a  stone  in  by  far  the 
plurality  of  instances  is  more  interesting  than 
the  surface  of  an  ordinary  hill;  more  fantastic 
in  form,  and  incomparably  richer  in  color. 

39.  On  a  Highland  hillside  are  multitudinous 
clusters  of  fern  and  heather;  on  an  Alpine 
one,  multitudinous  groves  of  chestnut  and  pine. 
The  number  of  the  things  may  be  the  same, 
but  the  sense  of  infinity  is  in  the  latter  case 
iax  greater,  because  the  number  is  of  nobler 
things.  Indeed,  so  far  as  mere  magnitude  of 
space  occupied  on  the  field  of  the  horizon  is 
the  measure  of  objects,  a  bank  of  earth  ten 
feet  high  may,  if  we  stoop  to  the  foot  of  it, 


I20  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

be  made  to  occupy  just  as  much  of  the  sky 
as  that  bank  of  mountain  at  Villeneuve;  nay, 
in  many  respects,  its  little  ravines  and  escarp- 
ments, watched  with  some  help  of  imagination, 
may  become  very  sufficiently  representative  to 
us  of  those  of  the  great  mountain;  and  in 
classing  all  water-worn  mountain  ground  under 
the  general  and  humble  term  of  Banks,  I  mean 
to  imply  this  relationship  of  structure  between 
the  smallest  eminences  and  the  highest.  But 
in  this  matter  of  superimposed  quantity,  the 
distinctions  of  rank  are  at  once  fixed.  The 
heap  of  earth  bears  its  few  tufts  of  moss,  or 
knots  of  grass;  the  Highland  or  Cumberland 
mountain,  its  honeyed  heathers  or  scented 
ferns;  but  the  mass  of  the  bank  at  Martigny 
or  Villeneuve  has  a  vineyard  in  every  cranny 
of  its  rocks,  and  a  chestnut  grove  on  every 
crest  of  them.  .  .  .  The  minute  mounds  and 
furrows  scattered  up  the  side  of  that  great 
promontory,  when  they  are  actually  approached 
after   three   or   four  hours'   climbing,   turn   into 


ILLUSTRATIVE:  STONES.  121 

independent  hills,  with  true  parks  of  lovely 
pasture-land  enclosed  among  them,  and  avenue 
after  avenue  of  chestnuts,  walnuts,  and  pines 
bending  round  their  bases ;  while  in  the  deeper 
dingles,  populous  villages,  literally  bound  down 
to  the  rock  by  enormous  trunks  of  vine,  which, 
first  trained  lightly  over  the  loose  stone  roofs, 
have  in  process  of  years  cast  their  fruitful  net 
over  the  whole  village,  and  fastened  it  to  the 
ground  under  their  purple  weight  and  wayward 
coils  as  securely  as  ever  human  heart  was  fast- 
ened to  earth  by  the  net  of  the  Flatterer. 

40.  When  a  rock  of  any  kind  has  lain  for 
some  time  exposed  to  the  weather,  Nature  fin- 
ishes it  in  her  own  way.  First  she  takes  won- 
derful pains  about  its  forms,  sculpturing  it  into 
exquisite  variety  of  dent  and  dimple,  and 
rounding  or  hollowing  it  into  contours  which 
for  fineness  no  human  hand  can  follow;  then 
she  colors  it;  and  every  one  of  her  touches 
of   color,    instead    of   being   a   powder    mixed 


122  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

with  oil,  is  a  minute  forest  of  living  trees, 
glorious  in  strength  and  beauty,  and  conceal- 
ing wonders  of  structure. 

41.  On  the  broken  rocks  in  the  foreground 
in  the  crystalline  groups,  the  mosses  seem  to 
set  themselves  consentfully  and  deliberately  to 
the  task  of  producing  the  most  exquisite  har- 
monies of  color  in  their  power.  They  will 
not  conceal  the  form  of  the  rock,  but  will 
gather  over  it  in  little  brown  bosses,  like  small 
cushions  of  velvet,  made  of  mixed  threads  of 
dark  ruby  silk  and  gold,  rounded  over  more 
subdued  films  of  white  and  gray,  with  lightly 
crisped  and  curled  edges  hke  hoar  frost  on 
fallen  leaves,  and  minute  clusters  of  upright 
orange  stalks  with  pointed  caps,  and  fibres  of 
deep  green,  and  gold,  and  faint  purple  passing 
into  black,  all  woven  together,  and  following 
with  unimaginable  fineness  of  gentle  growth  the 
undulation  of  the  stone  they  cherish,  until  it 
is  charged  with  color  so  that  it  can  receive  no 


ILLUSTRATIVE:  STONES.  123 

more ;  and  instead  of  looking  rugged,  or  cold,  or 
stem,  or  an}'thing  that  a  rock  is  held  to  be  at  heart,  it 
seems  to  be  clothed  with  a  soft  dark  leopard's  skin, 
embroidered  with  arabesque  of  purple  and  silver. 

42.  The  color  of  the  white  varieties  of  mar- 
ble is  of  exquisite  delicacy,  owing  to  the  partial 
translucency  of  the  pure  rock ;  and  it  has  always 
appeared  to  me  a  most  wonderful  ordinance  — 
one  of  the  most  marked  pieces  of  purpose  in 
the  creation  —  that  all  the  variegated  kinds 
should  be  comparatively  opaque,  so  as  to  set  off 
the  color  on  the  surface,  while  the  white,  which, 
if  it  had  been  opaque,  would  have  looked  some- 
what coarse,  (as  for  instance  common  chalk 
does,)  is  rendered  just  translucent  enough  to 
give  an  impression  of  extreme  purity,  but  not  so 
translucent  as  to  interfere  in  the  least  with  the 
distinctness  of  any  forms  into  which  it  is 
wrought.  The  colors  of  variegated  marbles  are 
also  for  the  most  part  very  beautiful,  especially 
those  composed  of  purple,  amber,  and  green. 


124  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

with  white ;  and  there  seems  something  notably 
attractive  to  the  human  mind  in  the  vague  and 
veined  labyrinths  of  their  arrangements. 

43.  I  have  often  had  occasion  to  allude  to 
the  apparent  connection  of  brilliancy  of  color 
with  vigor  of  life  or  purity  of  substance.  This 
is  pre-eminently  the  case  in  the  mineral  king- 
dom. The  perfection  with  which  the  particles 
of  any  substance  unite  in  crystallization,  corre- 
sponds in  that  kingdom  to  the  vital  power  in 
organic  nature ;  and  it  is  a  universal  law,  that 
according  to  the  purity  of  any  substance,  and 
according  to  the  energy  of  its  crystallization,  is 
its  beauty  or  brightness.  Pure  earths  are  white 
when  in  powder ;  and  the  same  earths,  which 
are  the  constituents  of  clay  and  sand,  form, 
when  crystaUized,  the  emerald,  ruby,  sapphire, 
amethyst,  and  opal. 

44.  As  we  pass  between  the  hills  which  have 
been  shaken  by  earthquake  and  torn  by  convul- 


ILLUSTRATIVE:   STONES.  125 

sion,  we  find  that  periods  of  perfect  repose  suc- 
ceed those  of  destruction.  The  pools  of.  calm 
water  lie  clear  beneath  their  fallen  rocks,  the 
water-lilies  gleam,  and  the  reeds  whisper  among 
their  shadows;  the  village  rises  again  over  the 
forgotten  graves,  and  its  church  tower,  white 
through  the  storm-light,  proclaims  a  renewed 
appeal  to  His  protection  in  whose  hand  "are 
all  the  comers  of  the  earth,  and  the  strength  of 
the  hills  is  His  also."  There  is  no  loveUness  of 
Alpine  valley  that  does  not  teach  the  same 
lesson.  It  is  just  where  "the  mountain  falling 
Cometh  to  nought,  and  the  rock  is  removed  out 
of  his  place,"  that  in  process  of  years  the  fair- 
est meadows  bloom  between  the  fragments,  the 
clearest  rivulets  murmur  from  between  their 
crevices  among  the  flowers,  and  the  clustered 
cottages,  each  sheltered  beneath  some  strength 
of  mossy  stone,  now  to  be  removed  no  more, 
and  with  their  pastured  flocks  around  them, 
safe  from  the  eagle's  stoop  and  the  wolfs  ravin, 
have  written  upon  their  fronts,  in  simple  words, 


126  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

the  mountaineer's  faith  in  the  ancient  promise, 
—  "Neither  shalt  thou  be  afraid  of  destruction, 
when  it  cometh ;  for  thou  shalt  be  in  league  with 
the  stones  of  the  field,  and  the  beasts  of  the 
field  shall  be  at  peace  with  thee." 


SECTION  VII. 

ILLUSTRATIVE  :    PLANTS  AND  FLOWERS. 

45.  Wonderful,  in  universal  adaptation  to 
man's  need,  desire,  and  discipline,  God's  daily 
preparation  of  the  earth  for  him,  with  beautiful 
means  of  life.  First,  a  carpet,  to  make  it  soft 
for  him ;  then  a  colored  fantasy  of  embroidery 
thereon;  then,  tall  spreading  of  foliage  to 
shade  him  from  sun-heat,  and  shade  also  the 
fallen  rain,  that  it  may  not  dry  quickly  back 
into  the  clouds,  but  stay  to  nourish  the  springs 
among  the  moss.  Stout  wood  to  bear  this  leaf- 
age ;  easily  to  be  cut,  yet  tough  and  light,  to 
make  houses  for  him,  or  instruments  (lance- 
shaft,  or  plough-handle,  according  to  his  tem- 
per) ;  useless  it  had  been  if  harder ;  useless  if 
less  fibrous;  useless  if  less  elastic.  Winter 
comes,  and  the  shade  of  leafage  falls  away,  to 
127 


128  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

let  the  sun  warm  the  earth ;  the  strong  boughs 
remain,  breaking  the  strength  of  winter  winds. 
The  seeds  which  are  to  prolong  the  race,  in- 
numerable according  to  the  need,  are  made 
beautiful  and  palatable,  varied  into  infinitude 
of  appeal  to  the  fancy  of  man,  or  provision  for 
his  service;  cold  juice,  or  flowing  spice,  or 
balm,  or  incense,  softening  oil,  preserving  resin, 
medicine  of  styptic,  febrifuge,  or  lulling  charm ; 
and  all  these  presented  in  forms  of  endless 
change.  Fragility  or  force,  softness  and  strength, 
in  all  degrees  and  aspects ;  unerring  uprightness, 
as  of  temple  pillars,  or  unguided  wandering  of 
feeble  tendrils  on  the  ground ;  mighty  resist- 
ances of  rigid  arm  and  limb  to  the  storms  of 
ages,  or  wavings  to  and  fro  with  faintest  pulse 
of  summer  streamlet ;  roots  cleaving  the  strength 
of  rock,  or  binding  the  transience  of  the  sand ; 
crests  basking  in  sunshine  of  the  desert,  or  hid- 
ing by  dripping  spring  and  lightless  cave ;  foli- 
age far  tossing  in  entangled  fields  beneath  every 
wave  of  ocean  —  clothing  with  variegated,  ever- 


PLANTS  AND  FLOWERS.  129 

lasting  films  the  peaks  of  the  trackless  moun- 
tains, or  ministering,  at  cottage  doors,  to  every 
gentlest  passion  and  simplest  joy  of  humanity. 

/  46.  If  ever  in  autumn  a  pensiveness  falls 
upon  us,  as  the  leaves  drift  by  in  their  fading, 
may  we  not  wisely  look  up  in  hope  to  their 
mighty  monuments?  Behold  how  fair,  how  far 
prolonged  in  arch  and  aisle,  the  avenues  of  the 
valleys,  the  fringes  of  the  hills !  so  stately,  —  so 
eternal ;  the  joy  of  man,  the  comfort  of  all  liv- 
ing creatures,  the  glory  of  the  earth,  —  they  are 
but  the  monuments  of  those  poor  leaves  that  flit 
faintly  past  us  to  die.  Let  them  not  pass,  with- 
out our  understanding  their  last  counsel  and  ex- 
ample :  that  we  also,  careless  of  monument  by 
I  the  grave,  may  build  it  in  the  world  —  monu- 
(  ment  by  which  men  may  be  taught  to  remem- 
ber, not  where  we  died,  but  where  we  Hved.     Jf 

)f      47.  The  Pine. — Magnificent !  nay,  sometimes 
almost  terrible.      Other   trees,   tufting   crag   or 


I30  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

hill,  yield  to  the  form  and  sway  of  the  ground, 
clothe  it  with  soft  compliance,  are  partly  its  sub- 
jects, partly  its  flatterers,  partly  its  comforters. 
But  the  pine  rises  in  serene  resistance,  self- 
contained;  nor  can  I  ever  without  awe  stay 
long  under  a  great  Alpine  cliff,  far  from  all 
house  or  work  of  men,  looking  up  to  its  com- 
panies of  pines,  as  they  stand  on  the  inaccessi- 
ble juts  and  perilous  ledges  of  the  enormous 
wall,  in  quiet  multitudes,  each  hke  the  shadow 
of  the  one  beside  it  —  upright,  fixed,  spectral, 
as  troops  of  ghosts  standing  on  the  walls  of 
Hades,  not  knowing  each  other,  dumb  forever. 
You  cannot  reach  them,  cannot  cry  to  them : 
those  trees  never  heard  human  voice;  they  are 
far  above  all  sound  but  of  the  winds.  No  foot 
ever  stirred  fallen  leaf  of  theirs :  all  comfortless 
they  stand,  between  the  two  eternities  of  the 
Vacancy'  and  the  Rock;  yet  with  such  iron 
will,  that  the  rock  itself  looks  bent  and  shat- 
tered beside  them,  —  fragile,  weak,  inconsistent, 
compared  to  their  dark  energy  of  deUcate  life. 


PLANTS  AND  FLOWERS.  131 

and    monotony    of   enchanted    pride  —  unnum-  > 
bered,  unconquerable.  '^ 

Then  note  farther  their  perfectness.  The 
impression  on  most  people's  minds  must  have 
been  received  more  from  pictures  than  reality, 
so  far  as  I  can  judge,  so  ragged  they  think  the 
pine ;  whereas  its  chief  character  in  health  is 
green  and  full  roundness.  It  stands  compact, 
like  one  of  its  own  cones,  slightly  curved  on  its 
sides,  finished  and  quaint  as  a  carved  tree  in 
some  EUzabethan  garden;  and  instead  of  being 
wild  in  expression,  forms  the  softest  of  all  for- 
est scenery,  for  other  trees  show  their  trunks 
and  twisting  boughs;  but  the  pine,  growing 
either  in  luxuriant  mass,  or  in  happy  isolation, 
allows  no  branch  to  be  seen.  Summit  behind 
summit  rise  its  pyramidal  ranges,  or  down  to 
the  very  grass  sweep  the  circlets  of  its  boughs ; 
so  that  there  is  nothing  but  green  cone,  and 
green  carpet.  Nor  is  it  only  softer,  but  in  one 
sense  more  cheerful  than  other  foliage,  for  it 
casts  only  a  pyramidal  shadow.  I  Lowland  forest 


\ 


132  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

arches  overhead,  and  checquers  the  ground  with  I 
darkness;   but   the   pine,   growing   in    scattered  I 
;i  groups,    leaves    the    glades    between    emerald-  1 

.ii  i 

^i  bright.      Its   gloom   is   all  its    own;    narrowing 
V  into  the  sky,  it  lets  the  sunshine  strike  down  to 
I  the   dew.      And  if  ever  a  superstitious   feeling 
comes   over  me   among   the  pine   glades,   it  is 
never  tainted  with  the  old  German  forest  fear, 
.but  it  is  only  a  more  solemn  tone  of  the  fairy 
enchantment  that  haunts  our  English  meadows; 
so  that  I  have  always  called  the  prettiest  pine- 
glade  in   Chamouni,    "Fairies'   Hollow."     It  is 
in   the    glen   beneath    the    steep    ascent   above 
Pont  Pelissier,  and  may  be  reached  by  a  little 
winding  path  which  goes  down  from  the  top  of 
the   hill^  —  being  indeed  not  truly  a  glen,  but 
a  broad  ledge  of  moss  and   turf,  leaning  in  a 
formidable  precipice  (which,  however,  the  gen- 

1  The  new  road  to  Chamouni  has  been  carried  right 
through  it.  A  cascade  on  the  right,  as  you  ascend,  marks 
the  place  spoken  of  in  the  text,  —  once  as  lonely  as  Corrie- 
nan-shian. 


PLANTS  AND  FLOWERS,  133 

tie  branches  hide)  over  the  Arve.  An  almost 
isolated  rock  promontory,  many  colored,  rises  at 
the  end  of  it.  On  the  other  sides  it  is  bordered 
by  cliffs,  from  which  a  little  cascade  falls,  liter- 
ally, down  among  the  pines,  for  it  is  so  light, 
shaking  itself  into  mere  showers  of  seed  pearl 
in  the  sun,  that  the  pines  don't  know  it  from 
mist,  and  grow  through  it  without  minding. 
Underneath,  there  is  only  the  mossy  silence ; 
and  above,  forever,  the  snow  of  the  nameless 
Aiguille. 

Other  trees  rise  against  the  sky  in  dots  and 
knots,  but  this,  in  fringes.  You  never  see  the 
edges  of  it,  so  subtle  are  they;  and  for  this 
reason,  —  it  alone  of  trees,  so  far  as  I  know, 
is  capable  of  the  fiery  change  which  has  been 
noticed  by  Shakespeare.  When  the  sun  rises 
behind  a  ridge  crested  with  pine,  provided  the 
ridge  be  at  a  distance  of  about  two  miles,  and 
seen  clear,  all  the  trees,  for  about  three  or 
four  degrees  on  each  side  of  the  sun,  become 
trees  of  light,  seen  in  clear  flame  against  the 


134  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

darker  sky,  and  dazzling  as  the  sun  itself.  I 
thought  at  first  this  was  owing  to  the  actual 
lustre  of  the  leaves ;  but  I  believe  now  it  is 
caused  by  the  cloud-dew  upon  them  —  every 
minutest  leaf  carrying  its  diamond.  It  seems 
as  if  these  trees,  living  always  among  the 
clouds,  had  caught  part  of  their  glory  from 
them;  and  themselves,  the  darkest  of  vegeta- 
tion, could  yet  add  splendor  to  the  sun 
itself. 

48.  The  Swiss  have  certainly  no  feelings  re- 
specting their  mountains  in  anywise  correspond- 
ent with  ours.  It  was  rather  as  fortresses  of 
defence,  than  as  spectacles  of  splendor,  that 
the  cliffs  of  the  Rothslock  bare  rule  over  the 
destinies  of  those  who  dwelt  at  their  feet ;  and 
the  training  for  which  the  mountain  children 
had  to  thank  the  slopes  of  the  Muotta-Thal, 
was  in  soundness  of  breath,  and  steadiness  of 
limb,  far  more  than  in  elevation  of  idea.  But 
the  point  which  I  desire  the  reader  to  note  is, 


PLANTS  AND  FLOWERS. 


135 


that  the  character  of  the  scene  which,  if  any, 
appears  to  have  been  impressive  to  the  inhab- 
itant, is  not  that  which  we  ourselves  feel  when 
we  enter  the  district.  It  was  not  from  their 
lakes,  nor  their  cliffs,  nor  their  glaciers  — 
though  these  were  all  pecuUarly  their  posses- 
sions—  that  the  three  venerable  cantons  re- 
ceived their  name.  They  were  not  called  the 
States  of  the  Rock,  nor  the  States  of  the  Lake, 
but  the  States  of  the  Forest.  And  the  one 
of  the  three  which  contains  the  most  touching 
record  of  the  spiritual  power  of  Swiss  religion, 
in  the  name  of  the  convent  of  the  "  Hill  of 
Angels,"  has,  for  its  own,  none  but  the  sweet 
childish  name  of  "Under  the  Woods." 

And  indeed  you  may  pass  under  them  if, 
leaving  the  most  sacred  spot  in  Swiss  history, 
the  Meadow  of  the  Three  Fountains,  you  bid 
the  boatman  row  southward  a  little  way  by  the 
shore  of  the  Bay  of  Uri.  Steepest  there  on 
its  western  side,  the  walls  of  its  rocks  ascend 
to  heaven.    Far  in  the  blue  of  evening,  Uke  a 


136  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

great  cathedral  pavement,  lies  the  lake  in  its 
darkness  ;  and  you  may  hear  the  whisper  of 
innumerable  falling  waters  return  from  the  hol- 
lows of  the  cliff,  like  the  voices  of  a  multitude 
praying  under  their  breath.  From  time  to 
time  the  beat  of  a  wave,  slow  lifted  where  the 
rocks  lean  over  the  black  depth,  dies  heavily 
as  the  last  note  of  a  requiem.  Opposite,  green 
with  steep  grass,  and  set  with  chalet  villages, 
the  Fron-Alp  rises  in  one  solemn  glow  of 
pastoral  light  and  peace ;  and  above,  against 
the  clouds  of  twilight,  ghostly  on  the  gray 
precipice,  stand,  myriad  by  myriad,  the  shadowy 
armies  of  the  Unterwalden  pine. 

49.  It  had  been  wild  weather  when  I  left 
Rome,  and  all  across  the  Campagna  the  clouds 
were  sweeping  in  sulphurous  blue,  with  a  clap 
of  thunder  or  two,  and  breaking  gleams  of  sun 
along  the  Claudian  aqueduct,  lighting  up  the 
infinity  of  its  arches,  like  the  bridge  of  Chaos. 
But  as  I  cUmbed  the  long  slope  of  the   Alban 


PLANTS  AND  FLOWERS.  137 

Mount,  the  storm  swept  finally  to  the  north, 
and  the  noble  outline  of  the  domes  of  Albano, 
and  graceful  darkness  of  its  ilex  grove,  rose 
against  pure  streaks  of  alternate  blue  and  amber, 
the  upper  sky  gradually  flushing  through  the  last 
fragments  of  rain-cloud  in  deep  palpitating  azure, 
half  aether  and  half  dew.  The  noonday  sun 
came  slanting  down  the  rocky  slopes  of  La 
Riccia,  and  their  masses  of  entangled  and  tall 
foliage,  whose  autumnal  tints  were  mixed  with 
the  wet  verdure  of  a  thousand  evergreens,  were 
penetrated  with  it,  as  with  rain.  I  cannot  call 
it  color, — it  was  conflagration.  Purple,  and 
crimson,  and  scarlet,  like  the  curtains  of  God's 
Tabernacle,  the  rejoicing  trees  sank  into  the 
valley  in  showers  of  light,  every  separate  leaf 
quivering  with  buoyant  and  burning  life;  each, 
as  it  turned  to  reflect,  or  to  transmit  the  sun- 
beam, first  a  torch  and  then  an  emerald.  Far 
up  into  the  recesses  of  the  valley  the  green  vistas 
arched  like  the  hollows  of  mighty  waves  of  some 
crystalline  sea,  with  the  arbutus  flowers  dashed 


138  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

along  their  banks  for  foam,  and  silver  flakes  of 
orange  spray  tossed  into  the  air  around  them, 
breaking  over  the  gray  walls  of  rock  into  a  thou- 
sand separate  stars,  fading  and  kindling  alter- 
nately as  the  weak  wind  lifted  and  let  them  fall. 
Every  glade  of  grass  burned  like  the  golden  floor 
of  heaven,  opening  in  sudden  gleams  as  the 
foliage  broke,  and  closed  above  it,  as  sheet-light- 
ning opens  in  a  cloud  at  sunset ;  the  motionless 
masses  of  dark  rock,  dark  though  flushed  with 
scarlet  lichen,  casting  their  quiet  shadows  across 
its  restless  radiance,  the  fountain  underneath 
them  filling  its  marble  hollow  with  blue  mist 
and  fitful  sound;  and,  over  all,  the  multitudi- 
nous bars  of  amber  and  rose  —  the  sacred  clouds 
that  have  no  darkness,  and  only  exist  to  illumine 
—  were  seen  in  fathomless  intervals  between  the 
solemn  and  orbed  repose  of  the  stone  pines, 
passing  to  lose  themselves  in  the  last,  white, 
blinding  lustre  of  the  measureless  line  where 
the  Campagna  melted  into  the  blaze  of  the 
sea. 


PLANTS  AND  FLOWERS.  139 

50.  Flowers  seem  intended  for  the  solace  of 
ordinary  humanity  :  children  love  them ;  quiet,  con- 
tented, ordinary  people  love  them  as  they  grow ; 
luxurious  and  disorderly  people  rejoice  in  them 
gathered ;  they  are  the  cottager's  treasure ;  and  in 
the  crowded  town,  mark,  as  with  a  little  broken 
fragment  of  rainbow,  the  windows  of  the  workers 
in  whose  hearts  rests  the  covenant  of  peace. 

51.  Yet  few  people  really  care  about  flowers. 
Many,  indeed,  are  fond  of  finding  a  new  shape 
of  blossom,  caring  for  it  as  a  child  cares  about 
a  kaleidoscope.  Many,  also,  like  a  fair  service 
of  flowers  in  the  greenhouse,  as  a  fair  service 
of  plate  on  the  table.  Many  are  scientifically 
interested  in  them,  though  even  these  in  the 
nomenclature,  rather  than  the  flowers;  and  a 
few  enjoy  their  gardens.  .  .  .  But,  the  blossom- 
ing time  of  the  year  being  principally  spring, 
I  perceive  it  to  be  the  mind  of  most  people, 
during  that  period,  to  stay  in  towns.  A  year 
or  two  ago  a  keen-sighted   and    eccentrically- 


140  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

minded  friend  of  mine,  having  taken  it  into  his 
head  to  violate  this  national  custom,  and  go  to 
the  Tyrol  in  spring,  was  passing  through  a  valley 
near  Landech  with  several  similarly  headstrong 
companions.  A  strange  mountain  appeared  in 
the  distance,  belted  about  its  breast  with  a  zone 
of  blue,  like  our  English  Queen.  Was  it  a  blue 
cloud,  a  blue  horizontal  bar  of  the  air  that  Titian 
breathed  in  youth,  seen  now  far  away,  which 
mortal  might  never  breathe  again  ?  Was  it 
a  mirage  —  a  meteor  ?  Would  it  stay  to  be 
approached  ?  —  (ten  miles  of  winding  road  yet 
between  them  and  the  foot  of  the  mountain) 
—  such  questioning  had  they  concerning  it. 
My  keen-sighted  friend,  alone,  maintained  it 
to  be  substantial;  —  whatever  it  might  be,  it 
was  not  air,  and  would  not  vanish.  The  ten 
miles  of  road  were  overpast,  the  carriage  left, 
the  mountain  climbed.  It  stayed  patiently, 
expanding  still  into  richer  breath  and  heaven- 
lier  glow  —  a  belt  of  gentians.  Such  things  may 
verily  be  seen  among  the  Alps  in  spring,  and  in 


PLANTS  AND  FLOWERS.  141 

spring  only ;    which  being  so,   I  observe  most 
people  prefer  going  in  autumn. 

52.  Perhaps  few  people  have  ever  asked 
themselves  why  they  admire  a  rose  so  much 
more  than  all  other  flowers.  If  they  consider, 
they  will  find,  first,  that  red  is,  in  a  delicately 
gradated  state,  the  loveliest  of  all  pure  colors ; 
and,  secondly,  that  in  the  rose  there  is  no 
shadow,  except  what  is  composed  of  color. 
All  its  shadows  are  fuller  in  color  than  its 
lights,  owing  to  the  translucency  and  reflective 
p)ower  of  the  leaves. 

53.  Has  the  reader  ever  considered  the  re- 
lations of  commonest  forms  of  volatile  sub- 
stance? The  invisible  particles  which  cause 
the  scent  of  a  rose-leaf,  how  minute,  how 
multitudinous,  passing  richly  away  into  the 
air  continually ! 

54.  In  the  range  of  inorganic  nature  I  doubt 
if   any    object    can    be    found    more   perfectly 


142  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

beautiful,  than  a  fresh,  deep  snow-drift,  seen 
under  warm  light.  Its  curves  are  of  incon- 
ceivable perfection  and  changefulness ;  its  sur- 
face and  transparency  alike  exquisite;  its  light 
and  shade  of  inexhaustible  variety  and  inimi- 
table finish,  —  the  shadows  sharp,  pale,  and  of 
heavenly  color,  the  reflected  lights  intense 
and  multitudinous,  and  mingled  with  the  sweet 
occurrences  of  transmitted  light.  ...  If,  pass- 
ing to  the  edge  of  a  sheet  of  it  upon  the 
lower  Alps,  early  in  May,  we  find,  as  we  are 
nearly  sure  to  find,  two  or  three  little  round 
openings  pierced  in  it;  and  through  these, 
emergent,  a  slender,  pensive,  fragile  flower,^ 
whose  small,  dark,  purple-fringed  bell  hangs 
down  and  shudders  over  the  icy  cleft  that  it 
has   cloven,   as  if  partly  wondering   at   its  own 

1  Soldanella  Alpina.  I  think  it  is  the  only  Alpine  flower 
which  actually  pierces  snow,  though  I  have  seen  gentians 
filling  thawed  hoof-prints.  Crocuses  are  languid  till  they 
have  had  sun  for  a  day  or  two.  But  the  soldanella  enjoys 
its  snow,  at  first,  and  afterwards  its  fields.  I  have  seen  it 
make  a  pasture  look  like  a  large  lilac  silk  gown. 


PLANTS  AND  FLOWERS.  143 

recent  grave,  and  partly  dying  of  very  fatigue 
after  its  hard-won  victory ;  we  shall  be,  or  we 
ought  to  be,  moved  by  a  totally  different  im- 
pression of  loveliness  from  that  which  we  re- 
ceive among  the  dead  ice  and  the  idle  clouds : 
there  is  now  uttered  to  us  a  call  for  sym- 
pathy, now  offered  to  us  an  image  of  moral 
purpose  and  achievement,  which,  however  un- 
conscious or  senseless  the  creature  may  indeed 
be  that  so  seems  to  call,  cannot  be  heard  with- 
out affection,  nor  contemplated  without  wor- 
ship, by  any  of  us  whose  heart  is  rightly 
turned,  or  whose  mind  is  clearly  and  surely 
sighted. 

55.  It  has  been  well  shown  by  Dr.  Herbert, 
that  many  plants  are  found  alone  on  a  certain 
soil  or  sub-soil  in  a  wild  state,  not  because 
such  soil  is  favorable  to  them,  but  because 
they  alone  are  capable  of  existing  on  it,  and 
because  all  dangerous  rivals  are  by  its  inhospi- 
tality  removed.    Now  if  we  withdraw  the  plant 


144  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

from    this    position,    which    it    hardly   endures, 
and    supply    it    with    the    earth    and    maintain 
about   it    the   temperature    that   it   delights   in ; 
withdrawing    from    it,    at    the    same    time,    all 
rivals,   which   in   such  conditions   Nature  would 
have    thrust    upon   it,   we    shall    indeed    obtain 
a  magnificently  developed  example  of  the  plant, 
colossal   in   size,  and  splendid   in  organization ; 
but  we  shall  utterly  lose  in  it  that  moral  ideal 
which  is  dependent  on   its   right    fulfilment   of 
its   appointed  functions.      It  was   intended  and 
created  by  the  Deity  for  the  covering  of  those  i 
I    lonely   spots  where   no  other   plant   could   live. 
!    It  has  been  thereto  endowed  with  courage  and 
i    strength,  and  capacities  of  endurance ;  its  char- 
\    acter   and  glory  are    not   therefore  in  the  glut- 
I    tonous     and     idle    feeding    of    its    own     over 
luxuriance,   at  the    expense    of  other  creatures 
utterly  destroyed  and  rooted  out   for  its   good 
alone ;  but  in  its  right  doing  of  its  hard  duty, ; 
and  forward   climbing  into  those  spots  of  for- 
lorn hope  where  it  alone  can  bear  witness  to 


^ 


to  be  I 
e  Sol-/ 


PLANTS  AND  FLOWERS.  145 

j  the  kindness  and  presence  of  the  Spirit  that 
'  cutteth  out  rivers  among  the  rocks,  as  He 
covers  the  valleys  with  com ;  and  there,  in  its  \ 
vanward  place,  and  only  there,  where  nothing 
is  withdrawn  for  it,  nor  hurt  by  it,  and  where 
nothing  can  take  part  of  its  honor,  nor  usurp 
its  throne,  are  its  strength  and  fairness,  and 
price,  and  goodness  in  the  sight  of  God 
truly  esteemed.  The  first  time  I  saw  the 
danella  Alpina,  before  spoken  of,  it  was  grow- 
ing of  magnificent  size  on  a  sunny  Alpine 
pasture,  among  bleating  of  sheep,  and  lowing 
of  cattle,  associated  with  a  profusion  of  Geum 
Montanura,  and  Ranunculus  Pyrenseus.  I  no- 
ticed it  only  because  new  to  me  —  nor  per- 
ceived any  peculiar  beauty  in  its  cloven  flower. 
Some  days  after,  I  found  it  alone,  among  the 
rack  of  the  higher  clouds,  and  howling  of  gla- 
cier winds ;  and,  as  I  described  it,  piercing 
through  an  edge  of  avalanche  which  in  its 
retiring  had  left  the  new  ground  brown  and 
lifeless,   and  as  if  burnt  by  recent  fire.      The 


146  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

plant  was  poor  and  feeble,  and  seemingly  ex- 
hausted with  its  efforts,  —  but  it  was  then  that 
I  comprehended  its  ideal  character,  and  saw 
its  noble  function  and  order  of  glory  among 
the  constellations  of  the  earth. 

56.  Grasses.  —  Minute,  granular,  feathery,  or 
downy  seed-vessels,  mingling  quaint  brown 
punctuation,  and  dusty  tremors  of  dancing 
grain,  with  the  bloom  of  the  nearer  fields ;  and 
casting  a  gossamered  grayness  and  softness  of 
plumy  mist  along  their  surfaces  far  away;  mys- 
terious evermore,  not  only  with  dew  in  the 
morning,  or  mirage  at  noon,  but  with  the  shak- 
ing threads  of  fine  arborescence,  each  a  little 
belfry  of  grainbells,  all  a-chime. 

57.  Gather  a  single  blade  of  grass,  and  exam- 
ine for  a  minute  quietly  its  narrow  sword-shaped 
strip  of  fluted  green.  Nothing,  as  it  seems, 
there  of  notable  goodness  or  beauty.  A  very 
little  strength  and  a  very  little  tallness,  and  a 


^ 


PLANTS  AND  FLOWERS.  147 

few  delicate  long  lines  meeting  in  a  point, — 
not  a  perfect  point  neither,  but  blunt  and 
unfinished,  by  no  means  a  creditable  or  appar- 
ently much-cared- for  example  of  Nature's  work- 
manship, made,  only  to  be  trodden  on  to-day, 
and  to-morrow  to  be  cast  into  the  oven,  —  and 
a  little  pale  and  hollow  stalk,  feeble  and  flaccid, 
I  Reading  down  to  the  dull  brown  fibres  of  roots. , 
And  yet,  think  of  it  well,  and  judge  whether,  of 
all  the  gorgeous  flowers  that  beam  in  summer 
air,  and  of  all  strong  and  goodly  trees,  pleasant 
to  the  eyes,  or  good  for  food,  —  stately  palm 
and  pine,  strong  ash  and  oak,  scented  citron, 
burdened  vine  —  there  be  any  by  man  so  deeply 
loved,  by  God  so  highly  graced,  as  that  narrow 
point  of  feeble  green.  And  well  does  it  fiilfil 
its  mission.  Consider  what  we  owe  merely  to 
the  meadow  grass,  to  the  covering  of  the  dark 
ground  by  that  glorious  enamel,  by  the  com- 
panies of  those  soft,  and  countless,  and  peace- 
ful spears.  The  fields !  Follow  forth  but  for 
a  little  time  the  thoughts  of  all  that  we  ought 


148  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

to  recognize  in  these  words.  All  spring  and 
summer  is  in  them  —  the  walks  by  silent, 
scented  paths  —  the  rests  in  noonday  heat, — 
the  joy  of  herds  and  flocks,  —  the  power  of  all 
shepherd  life  and  meditation,  —  the  life  of  sun- 
light upon  the  world  falling  in  emerald  streaks, 
and  falling  in  soft  blue  shadows  where  else  it 
would  have  struck  upon  the  dark  mould,  or 
scorching  dust.  Pastures  beside  the  pacing 
brooks,  soft  banks  and  knolls  of  lowly  hills, 
thymy  slopes  of  down,  overlooked  by  the  blue 
line  of  lifted  sea,  crisp  lawns,  all  dim  with 
early  dew,  or  smooth  in  evening  warmth  of 
barred  sunshine,  dinted  by  happy  feet,  and 
softening  in  their  fall  the  sound  of  loving 
voices,  —  all  these  are  summed  in  those  simple 
words;  and  these  are  not  all.  We  may  not 
measure  to  the  full  the  depth  of  this  heavenly 
gift  in  bur  own  land,  though  still  as  we  think 
of  it  longer,  the  infinite  of  that  meadow  sweet- 
ness, Shakespeare's  peculiar  joy,  would  open 
on  us  more  and  more;  yet  we  have  it  but  in 


PLANTS  AND  FLOWERS.  149 

part.      Go  out  in  the   springtime    among    the 
meadows    that    slope    from    the    shores    of  the 
Swiss  lakes  to  the  roots  of  their  lower  moun-  ' 
tains.     There,  mingled  with  the  taller  gentians,  ; 
and  the  white  narcissus,   the  grass  grows  deep  \ 
and  free ;  and  as  you  follow  the  winding  moun-  \ 
tain  path,  beneath  arching  boughs,  all  veiled  with  j 
blossom  —  paths  that  forever  droop  and  rise  over  ' 
the  green  banks  and  mounds  sweeping  down  in 
scented    undulation    steep    to    the    blue  water, 
studded  here  and  there  with  new-mown  heaps 
filling  all  the  air  with  fainter  sweetness,  —  look  up  -, 
towards  the  higher  hills,  where  the  waves  of  ever-  ', 
lasting  green  roll  silently  into  their  long   inlets  i 
among  the  shadows  of  the  pines;  and  we  may  i 
perhaps  at  last  know  the  meaning  of  those  quiet 
words  of  the  147th  Psalm,  "He  maketh  grass  to  ^ 
grow  upon  the  mountains."  •'^I 

Assembling  the  images  we  have  traced,  and 
adding  the  simplest  of  all,  from  Isaiah  xl.  6,  we 
find  the  grass  and  flowers  are  types,  in  their 
passing,  of  the  passing  of  human  life,  and  in 


150  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

their  excellence,  of  the  excellence  of  human 
life ;  and  this  in  twofold  way :  first  by  their 
beneficence,  and  then  by  their  endurance  —  the 
grass  of  the  earth,  in  giving  the  seed  of  corn, 
and  in  its  beauty  under  tread  of  foot  and  stroke 
of  scythe ;  and  the  grass  of  the  waters,  in  giving 
its  freshness  for  our  rest,  and  in  its  bending  be- 
fore the  wave.  But,  understood  in  the  broad 
human  and  Divine  sense,  the  ^^  herb  yielding 
seed "  —  (as  opposed  to  the  fruit  tree  yielding 
fruit)  —  includes  a  third  family  of  plants,  and 
fulfils  a  third  office  to  the  human  race.  It  in- 
cludes the  great  family  of  the  hnts  and  flaxes, 
and  fulfils  thus  the  three  offices  of  giving  food, 
raiment,  and  rest.  Follow  out  this  fulfilment ;  con- 
sider the  association  of  the  linen  garment  and  the 
linen  embroidery  with  the  priestly  office  and  the 
furniture  of  the  tabernacle,  and  consider  how 
the  rush  has  been  to  all  time  the  first  natural 
carpet  thrown  under  the  human  foot.  Then 
next  observe  the  three  virtues  definitely  set  forth 
by  the  three  families  of  plants — not  arbitrarily 


PLANTS  AND  FLOWERS.  151 

or  fancifully  associated  with  them,  but  in  all  the 
three  cases  marked  for  us  by  Scriptural  words : 
I  St.  Cheerfulness,  or  joyful  serenity ;  in  the  grass 
for  food  and  beauty  —  "Consider  the  lilies  of 
the  field,  how  they  grow;  they  toil  not,  neither 
do  they  spin."  2nd.  Humility ;  in  the  grass  for 
rest — "A  bruised  reed  shall  he  not  break." 
3rd.  Love;  in  the  grass  for  clothing,  (because 
of  its  swift  kindling,)  — "  The  smoking  flax  shall 
he  not  quench."  And  then  finally  observe  the 
confirmation  of  these  last  two  images  in,  I  sup- 
pose, the  most  important  prophecy,  relating  to 
the  future  state  of  the  Christian  Church,  which 
occurs  in  the  Old  Testament,  namely  that  con- 
tained in  the  closing  chapters  of  EzekieL  The 
measures  of  the  Temple  of  God  are  to  be  taken ; 
and  because  it  is  only  by  charity  and  humility 
that  those  measures  ever  can  be  taken,  the 
angel  has  "  a  line  of  fiax  in  his  hand,  and  a 
measuring  reed."  The  use  of  the  line  was  to 
measure  the  land,  and  of  the  reed  to  take  the 
dimensions  of  the  buildings ;  so  the  buildings  of 


152  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

the   church,  or  its   labors,  are   to   be   measured 
by  humility;  and  its  territory,  or  land,  by  love. 

58.  Leaves  motionless.  The  strong  pines 
wave  above  them,  and  the  weak  grasses  tremble 
beside  them ;  but  the  blue  stars  rest  upon  the 
earth  with  a  peace  as  of  heaven ;  and  far  along 
the  ridges  of  iron  rock,  moveless  as  they,  the 
rubied  crests  of  Alpine  rose  flush  in  the  low  rays 
of  morning. 

59.  Mosses.  —  Meek  creatures  !  the  first  mercy 
of  the   earth,  veiling   with    hushed    softness  its 

(  dintless   rocks;   creatures  full   of  pity,  covering 

1  with  strange  and  tender  honor  the  scarred  dis- 

{  grace  of  ruin,  laying  quiet  finger  on   the   trem- 

j  bling   stones   to   teach   them   rest.      No  words, 

I     that  I  know  of,  will  say  what  these  mosses  are. 

I 

/     None  are  delicate  enough,  none  perfect  enough, 

none  rich  enough.      How  is  one  to  tell  of  the 

rounded  bosses  of  furred  and  beaming  green,  — 

(      the    starred    divisions    of   rubied    bloom,    fine- 


PLANTS  AND  FLOWERS.  153 

filmed,  as  if  the  rock  spirits  could  spin  porphyry 
as  we  do  glass,  —  the  traceries  of  intricate  silver, 
and  fringes  of  amber,  lustrous,  arborescent, 
burnished  through  every  fibre  into  fitful  bright- 
ness and  glossy  traverses  of  silken  change,  yet 
all  subdued  and  pensive,  and  framed  for  sim- 
plest, sweetest  offices  of  grace?  They  will  not 
be  gathered,  like  the  flowers,  for  chaplet,  or 
love-token;  but  of  these  the  wild  bird  will 
make  its  nest,  and  the  wearied  child  his  pillow. 
And  as  the  earth's  first  mercy,  so  they  are 
its  last  gift  to  us :  when  all  other  service  is 
vain,  from  plant  and  tree,  the  soft  mosses  and 
gray  lichen  take  up  their  watch  by  the  head- 
stone. The  woods,  the  blossoms,  the  gift-bear- 
ing grasses,  have  done  their  parts  for  a  time; 
but  these  do  service  forever.  Trees  for  the 
builder's  yard,  flowers  for  the  bride's  chamber, 
com  for  the  granary,  moss  for  the  grave. 

60.   Lichens.  —  As    in    one   sense    the    hum- 
blest, in    another    they   are   the    most    honored 


154  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

of  the  earth-children.  Unfading  as  motionless, 
the  worm  frets  them  not,  and  the  autumn 
wastes  not.  Strong  in  loveliness,  they  neither 
blanch  in  heat,  nor  pine  in  frost.  To  them, 
slow-fingered,  constant-hearted,  is  intrusted  the 
weaving  of  the  dark,  eternal  tapestries  of  the 
hills ;  to  them,  slow-pencilled,  iris-dyed,  the  ten- 
der framing  of  their  endless  imagery.  Sharing 
the  stillness  of  the  unimpassioned  rock,  they 
share  also  its  endurance ;  and  while  the  winds 
of  departing  spring  scatter  the  white  hawthorn 
blossom  like  drifted  snow,  and  summer  dims 
on  the  parched  meadow  the  drooping  of  its 
cowslip  gold,  —  far  above,  among  the  moun- 
tains, the  silver  lichen  spots  rest,  star-like,  on 
the  stone :  and  the  gathering  orange  stain,  upon 
the  edge  of  yonder  western  peak,  reflects  the 
sunsets  of  a  thousand  years. 


SECTION  vm. 

EDUCATION. 

6i.  The  most  helpful  and  sacred  work  which 
can  at  present  be  done  for  humanity,  is  to 
teach  people  (chiefly  by  example,  as  all  best 
teaching  must  be  done)  not  how  "to  better 
themselves,"  but  how  to  "satisfy  themselves." 
It  is  the  ciurse  of  every  evil  nature  and  evil 
creature  to  eat  and  not  be  satisfied.  The 
words  of  blessing  are,  that  they  shall  eat  and 
be  satisfied;  and  as  there  is  only  one  kind  of 
water  which  quenches  all  thirst,  so  there  is  only 
one  kind  of  bread  which  satisfies  all  hunger  — 
the  bread  of  justice  or  righteousness  ;  which 
hungering  after,  men  shall  always  be  filled,  that 
being  the  bread  of  Heaven  \  but  hungering 
after  the  bread  or  wages  of  unrighteousness, 
shall   not   be    filled,   that   being   the   bread   of 

"55 


156  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

Sodom.  And  in  order  to  teach  men  how  to 
be  satisfied,  it  is  necessary  fully  to  understand 
the  art  of  joy  and  humble  life  —  this,  at  present, 
of  all  arts  or  sciences,  being  the  one  most 
needing  study.  Humble  life ;  that  is  to  say, 
proposing  to  itself  no  future  exaltation,  but 
only  a  sweet  continuance :  not  excluding  the 
idea  of  foresight,  but  wholly  of  fore-sorrow,  and 
taking  no  troublous  thought  for  coming  days ; 
so  also  not  excluding  the  idea  of  providence 
or  provision,  but  wholly  of  accumulation ;  — 
the  life  of  domestic  affection  and  domestic 
peace,  full  of  sensitiveness  to  all  elements  of 
costless  and  kind  pleasure;  —  therefore  chiefly 
to  the  loveliness  of  the  natural  world. 

62.  We  shall  find  that  the  love  of  nature, 
wherever  it  has  existed,  has  been  a  faithful 
and  sacred  element  of  feeling;  that  is  to  say, 
supposing  all  the  circumstances  otherwise  the 
same  with  respect  to  two  individuals,  the  one 
who  loves  nature  most  will  be  always  found  to 


PLANTS  AND  FLOWERS.  157 

have  more  capacity  for  faith  in  God  than  the 
other.  Nature -worship  will  be  found  to  bring 
with  it  such  a  sense  of  the  presence  and  power 
of  a  Great  Spirit  as  no  mere  reasoning  can 
either  induce  or  controvert ;  and  where  that 
nature-worship  is  innocently  pursued  —  i.e.,  with 
due  respect  to  other  claims  on  time,  feeling, 
and  exertion,  and  associated  with  the  higher 
principles  of  religion,  —  it  becomes  the  chan- 
nel of  certain  sacred  truths,  which  by  no  other 
means  can  be  conveyed. 

63.  Instead  of  supposing  the  love  of  natiire 
necessarily  connected  with  the  faithlessness  of 
the  age,  I  believe  it  is  connected  properly  with 
the  benevolence  and  liberty '  of  the  age ;   that 


1 1  forget,  now,  what  I  meant  by  "  liberty "  in  this  pas- 
sage; but  I  often  used  the  word  in  my  first  writings,  in  a 
good  sense,  thinking  of  Scott's  moorland  rambles  and  the 
like.  It  is  very  wonderful  to  me,  now,  to  see  what  hopes 
I  had  once:  but  Turner  was  alive,  then;  and  the  sun  used 
to  shine,  and  rivers  to  sparkle. 


158  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

it  is  precisely  the  most  healthy  element  which 
distinctively  belongs  to  us;  and  that  out  of  it, 
cultivated  no  longer  in  levity  or  ignorance,  but 
in  earnestness  and  as  a  duty,  results  will  spring 
of  an  importance  at  present  inconceivable ;  and 
lights  arise,  which,  for  the  first  time  in  man's 
history,  will  reveal  to  him  the  true  nature  of 
his  life,  the  true  field  for  his  energies,  and 
the  true  relations  between  him  and  his  Maker. 

64.  To  any  person  who  has  all  his  senses 
about  him,  a  quiet  walk,  over  not  more  than 
ten  or  twelve  miles  of  road  a  day,  is  the  most 
amusing  of  all  travelling;  and  all  travelling  be- 
comes dull  in  exact  proportion  to  its  rapidity. 

Gk)ing  by  railroad  I  do  not  consider  as  travel- 
ling at  all ;  it  is  merely  "  being  sent "  to  a 
place,  and  very  little  different  from  becoming 
a  parcel. 

65.  I  believe  an  immense  gain  in  the  bodily 
health  and  happiness  of  the  upper  classes  would 


EDUCATION.  159 

follow  on  their  steadily  endeavoring,  however 
clumsily,  to  make  the  physical  exertion  they 
now  necessarily  exert  in  amusements,  definitely 
serviceable.  It  would  be  far  better,  for  instance, 
that  a  gentleman  should  mow  his  own  fields, 
than  ride  over  other  people's. 

66.  In  order  to  define  what  is  fairest,  you 
must  delight  in  what  is  fair;  and  I  know  not 
how  few  or  how  many  there  may  be  who  take 
such  delight.  Once  I  could  speak  joyfully 
about  beautiful  things,  thinking  to  be  under- 
stood ;  now  I  cannot,  any  more,  for  it  seems  to 
me  that  no  one  regards  them.  Wherever  I 
look  or  travel,  in  England  or  abroad,  I  see  that 
men,  wherever  they  can  reach,  destroy  all  beauty. 
They  seem  to  have  no  other  desire  or  hope  but 
to  have  large  houses,  and  be  able  to  move  fast. 
Every  perfect  and  lovely  spot  which  they  can 
touch,  they  defile.  Thus  the  railroad  bridge 
over  the  fall  of  SchafThausen,  and  that  round 
the  Clarenj  shore  of  the  Lake  of  Geneva,  have 


l6o  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

destroyed  the  power  of  two  pieces  of  scenery 
of  which  nothing  can  ever  supply  the  place,  in 
appeal  to  the  higher  ranks  of  European  mind. 

67,  The  first  thing  which  I  remember  as  an 
event  in  life,  was  being  taken  by  my  nurse  to 
the  brow  of  Friar's  Crag  on  Derwentwater. 
The  intense  joy,  mingled  with  awe,  that  I  had 
in  looking  through  the  hollows  in  the  mossy 
roots,  over  the  crag  into  the  dark  lake,  has 
associated  itself  more  or  less  with  all  twining 
roots  of  trees  ever  since.  Two  other  things  I 
remember  as,  in  a  sort,  beginnings  of  life ;  — 
crossing  Shap-fells,  being  let  out  of  the  chaise  to 
run  up  the  hills;  and  going  through  Glenfarg, 
near  Kinross,  on  a  winter's  morning,  when  the 
rocks  were  hung  with  icicles;  these  being  cul- 
minating points  in  an  early  life  of  more  travel- 
ling than  is  usually  indulged  to  a  child.  In 
such  joumeyings,  whenever  they  brought  me 
near  hills,  and  in  all  mountain  ground  and 
scenery,  I  had   a   pleasure,  as    early   as    I    can 


EDUCATION.  i6l 

remember,  and  continuing  till  I  was  eighteen 
or  twenty,  infinitely  greater  than  any  which  has 
been  since  possible  to  me  in  anything. 

68.  A  fool  always  wants  to  shorten  space  and 
time ;  a  wise  man  wants  to  lengthen  both.  A 
fool  wants  to  kill  space  and  time;  a  wise  man, 
first  to  gain  them,  then  to  animate  them. 

69.  I  suspect  that  system-makers  in  general 
are  not  of  much  more  use,  each  in  his  own  do- 
main, than,  in  that  of  Pomona,  the  old  women 
who  tie  cherries  upon  sticks,  for  the  more 
portableness  of  the  same.  To  cultivate  well, 
and  choose  well,  your  cherries,  is  of  some  im- 
portance ;  but  if  they  can  be  had  in  their  own 
wild  way  of  clustering  about  their  crabbed  stalks, 
it  is  a  better  connection  for  them  than  any 
others ;  and  if  they  cannot,  then  so  that  they  be 
not  bruised,  it  makes  to  a  boy  of  practical  dis- 
position not  much  difference  whether  he  gets 
them  by  handfuls,  or  in  beaded  symmetry  on 
the  exalting  stick. 


// 


l6a  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

70.  Every  great  man  is  always  being  helped 
by  everybody,  for  his  gift  is  to  get  good  out  of 
all  things  and  all  persons. 

.)'■ 

71.  God  appoints  to  every  one  of  His  crea-  . 
tures  a  separate  mission,  and  if  they  discharge  1 
it  honorably,  if  they  quit  themselves  like  men, 
and  faithfully  follow  the  light  which  is  in  them, 
withdrawing  from  it  all  cold  and  quenching  in- 
fluence, there  will  assuredly  come  of  it  such 
burning  as,  in  its  appointed  mode  and  measure, 
shall  shine  before  men,  and  be  of  service 
constant  and  holy.  Degrees  infinite  of  lustre 
there  must  always  be,  but  the  weakest  among 
us  has  a  gift,  however  seemingly  trivial,  which 

is  peculiar  to  him,   and  which,  worthily  used,  j^' 
will  be  a  gift  also  to  his  race  forever. 

■:  72.  There  is  not  any  matter,  nor  any  spirit, 
nor  any  creature,  but  it  is  capable  of  a  unity  of 
some  kind  with  other  creatures;  and  in  that 
unity  is  its  perfection  and  theirs,  and  a  pleasure 


EDUCATION,  163 

also  for  the  beholding  of  all  other  creatures  that 
can  behold.  So  the  unity  of  spirits  is  partly  in 
their  sympathy,  and  partly  in  their  giving  and 
taking,  ami  always  in  their  love ;  and  these  are 
their  deUght  and  their  strength ;  for  their 
strength  is  in  their  co-working  and  army  fellow- 
ship, and  their  delight  is  in  their  giving  and  re- 
ceiving of  alternate  and  perpetual  good;  their 
inseparable  dependency  on  each  other's  being, 
and  their  essential  and  perfect  depending  on 
their  Creator's.  And  so  the  unity  of  earthly 
creatures  is  their  power,  and  their  peace;  not 
like  the  dead  and  cold  peace  of  undisturSed 
stones  and  solitary  mountains,  but  the  living 
peace  of  trust,  and  the  living  power  of  support ;  /  / 
of  hands  that  hold  each  other  and  are  still.*  /f 

73.   It  is  good  to  read  of  that  kindness  and 

humbleness  of  St.  Francis  of  Assisi,  who  spoke 

^  A  long,  affected,  and  obscure  second  volume  sentence, 
written  in  imitation  of  Hooker.  One  short  sentence  from 
Ecclesiastes  is  the  sum  of  it:  "How  can  one  be  warm 
alone  ?  " 


1 64  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

never  to  bird,  nor  to  cicada,  nor  even  to  wolf 
and  beasts  of  prey,  but  as  his  brother;  —  and 
so  we  find  are  moved  the  minds  of  all  good  and 
mighty  men,  as  in  the  lesson  that  we  have  from 
the  "  Mariner  "  of  Coleridge,  and  yet  more  truly 
and  rightly  taught   in   the   "Hartleap  Well"  — 

i "  Never  to  blend  our  pleasure  or  our  pride 

I     With  sorrow  of  the  meanest  thing  that  feels,"  — 

and  again  in  the  "  White  Doe  "  of  Rylstone,  with 
the   added   teaching,   that  anguish   of  our   own 

"  Is  tempered  and  allayed  by  sympathies 
Aloft  ascending,  and  descending  deep. 
Even  to  the  inferior  kinds ;  "  — 

SO  that  I  know  not  of  anything  more  destruc- 
tive of  the  whole  theoretic  faculty,  not  to  say  of 
the    Christian    character    and    human    intellect,^ 

1 1  am  more  and  more  grieved,  as  I  re-read  this  and  other 
portions  pf  the  most  affected  and  weak  of  all  my  books, 
(written  in  a  moulting  time  of  my  life,)  — the  second  volume 
of  "Modem  Painters," — at  its  morbid  violence  of  passion 
and  narrowness  of  thought.  Yet,  at  heart,  the  book  was, 
Uke  my  others,  honest;  and  in  substance  it  is  mostly  good; 
but  all  boiled  to  rags. 


EDUCATION.  165 

than  those  accursed  sports  in  which  man  makes 
of  himself  cat,  tiger,  leopard,  and  alligator  in 
one;  and  gathers  into  one  continuance  of  cru- 
elty, for  his  amusement,  all  the  devices  that 
brutes  sparingly  and  at  intervals  use  against 
each  other  for  their  necessities. 

\  74.  He  who  loves  not  God,  nor  his  brother, 
cannot  love  the  grass  beneath  his  feet,  nor  the 
creatures  which  live  not  for  his  uses,  filling 
those  spaces  in  the  universe  which  he  needs 
not :  while,  on  the  other  hand,  none  can  love 
God,  nor  his  human  brother,  without  loving  all 
things  which  his  Father  loves ;  nor"  without  look- 
ing upon  them  every  one  as  in  that  respect  his 
brethren  also,  and  perhaps  worthier  than  he,  if, 
in  the  under  concords  they  have  to  fill,  their  '^ 
part  is  touched  more  truly.^  "^ 

1  Morbidly  Franciscan,  again  I  and  I  am  really  com- 
pelled to  leave  out  one  little  bit  my  friend  liked,  —  as  all 
kindly  and  hopeftil  women  would,  —  about  everything  turn- 
ing out  right,  and  being  to  some  good  end.  For  we  have 
no  business  whatever  with  the  ends  of  things,  but  with  their 
beings;  and  their  beings  are  often  entirely  bad. 


1 66  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

75.  Things  may  always  be  seen  truly  by  can- 
did people,  though  never  completely.  No  hu- 
man capacity  ever  yet  saw  the  whole  of  a  thing ; 
but  we  may  see  more  and  more  of  it  the  longer 
we  look.  Every  individual  temper  will  see 
something  different  in  it;  but  supposing  the 
tempers  honest,  aU  the  differences  are  there. 
Every  advance  in  our  acuteness  of  perception 
will  show  us  something  new;  but  the  old  and 
first-discerned  thing  will  still  be  there,  not  falsi- 
fied, only  modified  and  enriched  by  the  new 
perceptions,  becoming  continually  more  beauti- 
ful in  its  harmony  with  them,  and  more  ap- 
proved as  a  part  of  the  infinite  truth. 


SECTION   JX. 

MORALITIES. 

76.  When  people  read,  "The  law  came  by 
Moses,  but  grace  and  truth  by  Christ,"  do  they 
suppose  it  means  that  the  law  was  ungracious 
and  untrue  ?  The  law  was  given  for  a  founda- 
tion; the  grace  (or  mercy)  and  truth  for  fulfil- 
ment ;  —  the  whole  forming  one  glorious  Trinity 
of  judgment,  mercy,  and  truth.^  And  if  people 
would  but  read  the  text  of  their  Bibles  with 
heartier  purpose  of  understanding  it,  instead  of 
superstitiously,  they  would  see  that  throughout 

1 A  great  deal  of  the  presumption  and  narrowness  caused 
by  my  having  been  bred  in  the  Evangelical  schools,  and 
which  now  fill  me  with  shame  and  distress  in  re-reading 
"  Modem  Painters,"  is,  to  my  present  mind,  atoned  for  by  the 
accurate  thinking  by  which  I  broke  my  way  through  to  the 
great  truth  expressed  in  this  passage,  which  all  my  later  writ- 
ings, without  exception,  have  been  directed  to  tnaintain  and 
illustrate. 

167 


l68  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

the  parts  which  they  are  intended  to  make 
most  personally  their  own,  (the  Psalms,)  it  is 
always  the  Law  which  is  spoken  of  with  chief 
joy.  The  Psalms  respecting  mercy  are  often 
sorrowful,  as  in  thought  of  what  it  cost;  but 
those  respecting  the  Law  are  always  full  of  de- 
light. David  cannot  contain  himself  for  joy  in 
thinking  of  it,  —  he  is  never  weary  of  its  praise  : 
"  How  love  I  Thy  law !  it  is  my  meditation  all 
the  day.  Thy  testimonies  are  my  delight  and 
my  counsellors ;  sweeter  also  than  honey  and 
the  honeycomb." 

77.  I  suppose  there  is  no  event  in  the  whole 
life  of  Christ  to  which,  in  hours  of  doubt  or  fear, 
men  turn  with  more  anxious  thirst  to  know  the 
close  facts  of  it,  or  with  more  earnest  and  pas- 
sionate dwelling  upon  every  syllable  of  its  re- 
corded narrative,  than  Christ's  showing  Himself 
to  His  disciples  at  the  Lake  of  Galilee.  There 
is  something  pre-eminently  open,  natural,  full 
fronting    our    disbelief,    in    this    manifestation. 


MORALITIES.  169 

The  others,  recorded  after  the  resurrection, 
were  sudden,  phantom-like,  occurring  to  men 
in  profound  sorrow  and  wearied  agitation  of 
heart;  not,  it  might  seem,  safe  judges  of  what 
they  saw.  But  the  agitation  was  now  over. 
They  had  gone  back  to  their  daily  work,  think- 
ing still  their  business  lay  net-wards,  unmeshed 
from  the  literal  rope  and  drag.  "Simon  Peter 
saith  unto  tjiem,  I  go  a-fishing.  They  say  unto 
him,  We  also  go  with  thee."  True  words 
enough,  and  having  far  echo  beyond  those 
Galilean  hills.  That  night  they  caught  noth- 
ing; but  when  the  morning  came,  in  the  clear 
light  of  it,  behold  !  a  figure  stood  on  the  shore. 
They  were  not  thinking  of  anything  but  their 
fruitless  hauls.  They  had  no  guess  who  it  was. 
It  asked  them  simply  if  they  had  caught  any- 
thing. They  say.  No,  and  it  tells  them  to  cast 
again.  And  John  shades  his  eyes  from  the 
morning  sun  with  his  hand  to  look  who  it  is; 
and  though  the  glistening  of  the  sea,  too,  daz- 
zles him,  he  makes  out  who  it  is  at  last ;   and 


170  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

poor  Simon,  not  to  be  outrun  this  time,  tightens 
his  fisher's  coat  about  him,  and  dashes  in  over 
the  nets.  One  would  have  liked  to  see  him 
swim  those  hundred  yards,  and  stagger  to  his 
knees  upon  the  beach. 

Well,  the  others  get  to  the  beach,  too,  in 
time,  in  such  slow  way  as  men  in  general  do 
get  in  this  world  to  its  true  shore,  much  im- 
peded by  that  wonderful  "dragging  the  net 
with  fishes";  but  they  get  there  —  seven  of 
them  in  all ;  first  the  Denier,  and  then  the  slow- 
est believer,  and  then  the  quickest  believer,  and 
then  the  two  throne-seekers,  and  two  more,  we 
know  not  who. 

They  sit  down  on  the  shore,  face  to  face  with 
Him,  and  eat  their  broiled  fish  as  He  bids. 
And  then  to  Peter,  all  dripping  still,  shivering, 
and  amazed,  staring  at  Christ  in  the  sun,  on 
the  other  side  of  the  coal-fire,  —  thinking  a  lit- 
tle perhaps  of  what  happened  by  another  coal- 
fire,  when  it  was  colder,  and  having  had  no 
word  changed  with  him   by  his  Master,  since 


MORAUTIES.  171 

that  look  of  His,  —  to  him  so  amazed,  comes 
the  question,  "Simon,  lovest  thou  Me?"  Try 
to  feel  that  a  little ;  and  think  of  it  till  it  is  true 
to  you :  and  then  take  up  that  infinite  monstros- 
ity and  hj'pocrisy,  —  Raphael's  cartoon  of  the 
charge  to  Peter.  Note  fii-st  the  bold  fallacy  — 
the  putting  all  the  Apostles  there,  a  mere  lie  to 
serve  the  Papal  heresy  of  the  Petric  supremacy, 
by  putting  them  all  in  the  background  while 
Peter  receives  the  charge,  and  making  them  all 
witnesses  to  it.  Note  the  handsomely  curled 
hair  and  neatly  tied  sandals  of  the  men  who 
had  been  out  all  night  in  the  sea-mists,  and  on 
the  slimy  decks ;  note  their  convenient  dresses 
for  going  a-fishing,  with  trains  that  lie  a  yard 
along  the  ground,  and  goodly  fringes  —  all  made 
to  match;  —  an  apostolic  fishing  costume.  Note 
how  Peter  especially,  (whose  chief  glory  was  in 
his  wet  coat  girt  about  him,  and  naked  limbs,) 
is  enveloped  in  folds  and  fringes,  so  as  to  kneel 
and  hold  his  keys  with  grace.  No  fire  of  coals 
at  all,  nor  lonely  mountain  shore,  but  a  pleasant 


172  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

Italian  landscape,  full  of  villas  and  churches, 
and  a  flock  of  sheep  to  be  pointed  at;  and  the 
whole  group  of  Apostles,  not  round  Christ,  as 
they  would  have  been  naturally,  but  straggling 
away  in  a  line,  that  they  may  be  shown.  The 
simple  truth  is,  that  the  moment  we  look  at  the 
picture  we  feel  our  belief  of  the  whole  thing 
taken  away.  There  is  visibly  no  possibility  of 
that  group  even  having  existed,  in  any  place, 
or  on  any  occasion.  It  is  all  a  mere  mythic 
absurdity,  and  faded  concoction  of  fringes,  mus- 
cular arms,  and  curly  heads  of  Greek  philoso- 
phers. 

78.  Among  the  children  of  God,  there  is 
always  that  fearful  and  bowed  apprehension  of 
His  majesty,  and  that  sacred  dread  of  all  offence 
to  Him  which  is  called  the  Fear  of  God ;  yet  of 
real  and  essential  fear  there  is  not  any,  but  cling- 
ing of  confidence  to  Him  as  their  Rock,  For- 
tress, and  Deliverer;  and  perfect  love,  and 
casting  out  of  fear;   so  that  it   is   not   possible 


MORAUTIES.  173 

that,  while  the  mind  is  rightly  bent  on  Him, 
there  should  be  dread  of  anything  earthly  or 
supernatural ;  and  the  more  dreadful  seems  the 
height  of  His  majesty,  the  less  fear  they  feel 
that  dwell  in  the  shadow  of  it.  "  Of  whom  shall 
I  be  afraid?" 

79.  If  for  every  rebuke  that  we  utter  of  men's 
vices,  we  put  forth  a  claim  upon  their  hearts ;  if 
for  every  assertion  of  God's  demands  from  them, 
we  could  substitute  a  display  of  His  kindness  to 
them;  if  side  by  side  with  every  warning  of 
death,  we  could  exhibit  proofs  and  promises 
of  immortahty;  if,  in  fine,  instead  of  assuming 
the  being  of  an  awful  Deity,  which  men,  though 
they  cannot,  and  dare  not  deny,  are  always  un- 
willing, sometimes  unable  to  conceive,  we  were 
to  show  them  a  near,  visible,  inevitable,  but  all 
beneficent  Deity,  whose  presence  makes  the 
earth  itself  a  heaven,  I  think  there  would  be 
fewer  deaf  children  sitting  in  the  market- 
place. 


174  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

80.  If  not  by  sympathy  discovered,  it  is  not 
in  words  explicable  with  what  divine  lines  and 
light  the  exercise  of  godliness  and  charity  will 
mould  and  gild  the  hardest  and  coldest  counte- 
nance, neither  to  what  darkness  their  departure 
will  consign  the  loveliest.  For  there  is  not  any 
virtue  the  exercise  of  which,  even  momentarily, 
will  not  impress  a  new  fairness  upon  the  features. 

81.  The  love  of  the  human  race  is  increased 
by  their  individual  differences,  and  the  unity  of 
the  creature,  made  perfect  by  each  having  some- 
thing to  bestow  and  to  receive,  bound  to  the 
rest  by  a  thousand  various  necessities  and  vari- 
ous gratitudes;  humility  in  each  rejoicing  to 
admire  in  his  fellow  that  which  he  finds  not  in 
himself,  and  each  being  in  some  respect  the 
complement  of  his  race. 

82.  They  who  are  as  the  angels  of  God  in 
heaven,  yet  cannot  be  conceived  as  so  assimi- 
lated that  their  different   experiences  and  affec- 


MORALITIES.  1 75 

tions  upon  earth  shall  then  be  forgotten  and 
effectless :  the  child,  taken  early  to  his  place, 
cannot  be  imagined  to  wear  there  such  a  body, 
nor  to  have  such  thoughts,  as  the  glorified" 
apostle  who  had  finished  his  course  and  kept 
the  faith  on  earth.  And  so,  whatever  perfec- 
tions and  likeness  of  love  we  may  attribute  to 
either  the  tried  or  the  crowned  creatures,  there 
is  the  difference  of  the  stars  in  glory  among 
them  yet;  differences  of  original  gifts,  though 
not  of  occupying  till  their  Lord  come ;  different 
dispensations  of  trial  and  of  trust,  of  sorrows  and 
support,  both  in  their  own  inward,  variable 
hearts,  and  in  their  positions  of  exposure  or  of 
peace ;  of  the  gourd  shadow  and  the  smiting  sun, 
of  calling  at  heat  of  day,  or  eleventh  hour,  of  the 
house  unroofed  by  faith,  or  the  clouds  opened 
by  revelation ;  differences  in  warning,  in  mercies, 
in  sickness,  in  signs,  in  time  of  calling  to  account ; 
alike  only  they  all  are  by  that  which  is  not  of 
them,  but  the  gift  of  God's  unchangeable  mercy  : 
"  I  will  give  unto  this  last  even  as  unto  thee." 


176  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

83.  The  desire  of  rest  planted  in  the  heart  is 
no  sensual,  no  unworthy  one ;  but  a  longing  for 
renovation,  and  for  escape  from  a  state  whose 
every  phase  is  mere  preparation  for  another 
equally  transitory,  to  one  in  which  permanence 
shall  have  become  possible  through  perfection. 
Hence  the  great  call  of  Christ  to  men,  that  call 
on  which  St.  Augustine  fixed  as  the  essential 
expression  of  Christian  hope,  is  accompanied 
by  the  promise  of  rest;  and  the  death  bequest 
of  Christ  to  men,  is  peace. 

84.  He  who  has  once  stood  beside  the  grave, 
to  look  back  upon  the  companionship  which 
has  been  forever  closed,  feeling  how  impotent, 
there,  are  the  wild  love,  and  the  keen  sorrow,  to 
give  one  instant's  pleasure  to  the  pulseless  heart, 
or  atone  in  the  lowest  measure  to  the  departed 
spirit,'  for  the  hour  of  unkindness,  will  scarcely 
for  the  future  incur  that  debt  to  the  heart,  which 
can  only  be  discharged  to  the  dust.  But  the 
lessons  which  men   receive   as   individuals,  they 


MORAUTIES.  177 

do  not  learn  as  nations.  Again  and  again  they 
have  seen  their  noblest  descend  into  the  grave, 
and  have  thought  it  enough  to  garland  the  tomb- 
stone when  they  had  not  crowned  the  brow,  and 
to  pay  the  honor  to  the  ashes,  which  they  had 
denied  to  the  spirit.  Let  it  not  displease  them 
that  they  are  bidden,  amidst  the  tumult  and  the 
dazzle  of  their  busy  life,  to  listen  for  the  few 
voices,  and  watch  for  the  few  lamps,  which  God 
has  toned  and  lighted  to  charm  and  to  guide 
them,  that  they  may  not  learn  their  sweetness 
by  their  silence,  nor  their  light  by  their  decay. 

85.  In  the  Cathedral  of  Lucca,  near  the 
entrance  door  of  the  north  transept,  there  is  a 
monument  by  Jacopo  della  Quercia  to  Ilaria  di 
Caretto,  the  wife  of  Paolo  Guinigi.  I  name  it 
not  as  more  beautiful  or  perfect  than  other 
examples  of  the  same  period ;  but  as  furnishing 
an  instance  of  the  exact  and  right  mean  be- 
tween the  rigidity  and  rudeness  of  the  earlier 
monumental  effigies,  and   the   morbid   imitation 


178  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

of  life,  sleep,  or  death,  of  which  the  fashion  has 
taken  place  in  modern  times.  She  is  lying  on  a 
simple  couch,  with  a  hound  at  her  feet ;  not  on 
the  side,  but  with  the  head  laid  straight  and 
simply  on  the  hard  pillow,  in  which,  let  it  be 
observed,  there  is  no  effort  at  deceptive  imita- 
tion of  pressure.  —  It  is  understood  as  a  pillow, 
but  not  mistaken  for  one.  The  hair  is  bound 
in  a  flat  braid  over  the  fair  brow,  the  sweet  and 
arched  eyes  are  closed,  the  tenderness  of  the 
loving  lips  is  set  and  quiet ;  there  is  that  about 
them  which  forbids  breath;  something  which  is 
not  death  nor  sleep,  but  the  pure  image  of  both. 
The  hands  are  not  lifted  in  prayer,  neither 
folded,  but  the  arms  are  laid  at  length  upon  the 
body,  and  the  hands  cross  as  they  fall.  The 
feet  are  hidden  by  the  drapery,  and  the  form  of 
the  limbs  concealed,  but  not  their  tenderness. 

Zd.  I  do  not  know  any  district  possessing  a 
more  pure  or  uninterrupted  fulness  of  mountain 
character,  (and  that  of  the  highest  order,)  or 


MORALITIES.  179 

which  appears  to  have  been  less  disturbed  by 
foreign  agencies,  than  that  which  borders  the 
course  of  the  Trient  between  Valorsine  and 
Martigny.  The  paths  which  lead  to  it  out  of 
the  valley  of  the  Rhone,  rising  at  first  in  steep 
circles  among  the  walnut  trees,  like  winding 
stairs  among  the  pillars  of  a  Gothic  tower,  retire 
over  the  shoulders  of  the  hills  into  a  valley  al- 
most unknown,  but  thickly  inhabited  by  an 
industrious  and  patient  population.  Along  the 
ridges  of  the  rocks,  smoothed  by  old  glaciers 
into  long,  dark,  billowy  swellings,  like  the  backs 
of  plunging  dolphins,  the  peasant  watches  the 
slow  coloring  of  the  tufts  of  moss  and  roots  of 
herb,  which  little  by  Httle  gather  a  feeble  soil 
over  the  iron  substance ;  then,  supporting  the 
narrow  slip  of  clinging  ground  with  a  few  stones, 
he  subdues  it  to  the  spade;  and  in  a  year  or 
two  a  little  crest  of  corn  is  seen  waving  upon 
the  rocky  casque.  The  irregular  meadows  run 
in  and  out  like  inlets  of  lake  among  these  har- 
vested   rocks,  sweet  with    perpetual  streamlets 


l8o  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

that  seem  always  to  have  chosen  the  steepest 
places  to  come  down  for  the  sake  of  the  leaps, 
scattering  their  handfuls  of  crystal  this  way  and 
that,  as  the  wind  takes  them  with  all  the  grace, 
but  with  none  of  the  formalism,  of  fountains; 
dividing  into  fanciful  change  of  dash  and  spring, 
yet  with  the  seal  of  their  granite  channels  upon 
them,  as  the  lightest  play  of  human  speech  may 
bear  the  seal  of  past  toil,  and  closing  back  out 
of  their  spray  to  lave  the  rigid  angles,  and 
brighten  with  silver  fringes  and  glassy  films 
each  lower  and  lower  step  of  sable  stone ;  until 
at  last,  gathered  altogether  again,  —  except  per- 
haps some  chance  drops  caught  on  the  apple 
blossom,  where  it  has  budded  a  little  nearer 
the  cascade  than  it  did  last  spring,  —  they  find 
their  way  down  to  the  turf,  and  lose  themselves 
in  that,  silently ;  with  quiet  depth  of  clear  water 
furrowing  among  the  grass-blades,  and  looking 
only  like  their  shadows  but  presently  emerging 
again  in  little  startled  gushes  and  laughing  hur- 
ries, as  if  they  had  remembered  suddenly  that 


MORALITIES.  l8l 

the  day  was  too  short  for  them  to  get  down  the 
hill.  Green  field,  and  glowing  rock,  and  glanc- 
ing streamlet,  all  slope  together  in  the  sunshine 
towards  the  brows  of  ravines,  where  the  pines 
take  up  their  own  dominion  of  saddened  shade  j 
and  with  everlasting  roar,  in  the  twilight,  the 
stronger  torrents  thunder  down,  pale  from  the 
glaciers,  filling  all  the  chasms  with  enchanted 
cold,  beating  themselves  to  pieces  against  the 
great  rocks  that  they  have  themselves  cast 
down,  and  forcing  fierce  way  beneath  their 
ghastly  poise.  The  mountain  paths  stoop  to 
those  glens  in  forky  zigzags,  leading  to  some 
gray  and  narrow  arch,  all  fringed  under  its 
shuddering  curve  with  the  ferns  that  fear  the 
light ;  a  cross  of  rough-hewn  pine,  iron-bound 
to  its  parapet,  standing  dark  against  the  lurid 
fury  of  the  foam.  Far  up  the  glen,  as  we  pause 
beside  the  cross,  the  sky  is  seen  through  the 
openings  in  the  pines  thin  with  excess  of  light; 
and,  in  its  clear  consuming  flame  of  white  space, 
the  summits  of  the  rocky  mountains  are  gathered 


1 82  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

into  solemn  crowns  and  circlets,  all  flushed  in 
that  strange  faint  silence  of  possession  by  the 
sunshine,  which  has  in  it  so  deep  a  melancholy, 
full  of  power,  yet  as  frail  as  shadows;  lifeless, 
like  the  walls  of  a  sepulchre,  yet  beautiful  in 
tender  fall  of  crimson  folds,  like  the  veil  of  some 
sea  spirit,  that  lives  and  dies  as  the  foam  flashes ; 
fixed  on  a  perpetual  throne,  stern  against  all 
strength,  lifted  above  all  sorrows,  and  yet 
effaced  and  melted  utterly  into  the  air  by  that 
last  sunbeam  that  has  crossed  to  them  from 
between  the  two  golden  clouds. 

High  above  all  sorrow?  Yes;  but  not  un- 
witnessing  to  it.  The  traveller  on  his  happy 
journey,  as  his  foot  springs  from  the  deep  turf, 
and  strikes  the  pebbles  gaily  over  the  edge  of 
the  mountain  road,  sees  with  a  glance  of  de- 
light the  clusters  of  nut-brown  cottages  that 
nestle  along  those  sloping  orchards,  and  glow 
beneath  the  boughs  of  the  pines.  Here,  it  may 
well  seem  to  him,  if  there  be  sometimes  hard- 
ship,   there   must   be    at    least   innocence    and 


MORALITIES.  183 

peace,  and  fellowship  of  the  human  soul  with 
nature.  It  is  not  so.  The  wild  goats  that 
leap  along  those  rocks  have  as  much  passion  of 
joy  in  all  that  fair  work  of  God  as  the  men 
that  toil  among  them,  —  perhaps  more.  Enter 
the  street  of  one  of  those  villages,  and  you  will 
find  it  foul  with  that  gloomy  foulness  that  is 
suffered  only  by  torpor,  or  by  anguish  of  soul. 
Here,  it  is  torpor  —  not  absolute  suffering  —  not 
starvation  or  disease ;  but  darkness  of  calm  en- 
during :  the  spring,  known  only  as  the  time  of 
the  scythe,  and  the  autumn  as  the  time  of  the 
sickle,  and  the  sun  only  as  a  warmth,  the  wind 
as  a  chill,  and  the  mountains  as  a  danger. 
They  do  not  understand  so  much  as  the  name 
of  beauty,  or  of  knowledge.  They  imderstand 
dimly  that  of  virtue.  Love,  patience,  hospital- 
ity, faith  —  these  things  they  know.  To  glean 
their  meadows  side  by  side,  so  happier;  to  bear 
the  burden  up  the  breathless  mountain  flank 
unmurmuringly ;  to  bid  the  stranger  drink  from 
their  vessel  of  milk;  to  see  at  the  foot  of  their 


1 84  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

low  death-beds  a  pale  figure  upon  a  cross,  dying, 
also  patiently;  —  in  this  they  are  different  from 
the  cattle  and  from  the  stones ;  but,  in  all  this, 
unrewarded,  as  far  as  concerns  the  present  life. 
For  them,  there  is  neither  hope  nor  passion  of 
spirit;  for  them,  neither  advance  nor  exulta- 
tion. Black  bread,  rude  roof,  dark  night,  labo- 
rious day,  weary  arm  at  sunset;  and  life  ebbs 
away.  No  books,  no  thoughts,  no  attainments, 
no  rest,  —  except  only  sometimes  a  little  sitting 
in  the  sun  under  the  church  wall,  as  the  bell 
tolls  thin  and  far  in  the  mountain  air;  a  patter- 
ing of  a  few  prayers,  not  understood,  by  the 
altar-rails  of  the  dimly  gilded  chapel,  —  and  so, 
back  to  the  sombre  home,  with  the  cloud  upon 
them  still  unbroken  —  that  cloud  of  rocky  gloom, 
born  out  of  the  wild  torrents  and  ruinous  stones, 
and  unlightened  even  in  their  religion,  except 
by  the  vague  promise  of  some  better  thing  un- 
known, mingled  with  threatening,  and  obscured 
by  an  unspeakable  horror  —  a  smoke,  as  it  were, 
of  martyrdom,  coiling  up  with  the  incense ;  and 


MORAUTIES,  i8S 

amidst  the  images  of  tortured  bodies  and  la- 
menting spirits  in  hurtling  flames,  the  very  cross, 
for  them,  dashed  more  deeply  than  for  others 
with  gouts  of  blood. 

87.  A  Highland  scene  is  beyond  doubt  pleas- 
ant enough  in  its  own  way;  but,  looked  close 
at,  has  its  shadows.'  Here,  for  instance,  is  the 
very  fact  of  one  —  as  pretty  as  I  can  remember, 
—  having  seen  many.  It  is  a  little  valley  of  soft 
turf,  enclosed  in  its  narrow  oval  by  jutting  rocks, 
and  broad  flakes  of  nodding  fern.  From  one 
side  of  it  to  the  other  winds,  serpentine,  a  clear 
brown  stream,  drooping  into  quicker  ripple  as 
it  reaches  the  end  of  the  oval  field,  and  then, 
first  islanding  a  purple  and  white  rock  with  an 
amber  pool,  it  dashes  away  into  a  narrow  fall  of 
foam  under  a  thicket  of  mountain  ash  and  alder. 

1  Passage  written  to  be  opposed  to  an  exuberant  descrip- 
tion, by  an  amiable  Scottish  pastor,  of  everything  flattering 
to  Scotchmen  in  the  Highlands.  I  have  put  next  to  it,  a  lit- 
tle study  of  the  sadness  of  Italy. 


l86  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

The  autumn  sun,  low,  but  clear,  shines  on  the 
scarlet  ash-berries  and  on  the  golden  birch-leaves, 
which,  fallen  here  and  there,  when  the  breeze 
has  not  caught  them,  rest  quiet  in  the  crannies 
of  the  purple  rock.  Beside  the  rock,  in  the 
hollow  under  the  thicket,  the  carcase  of  a  ewe, 
drowned  in  the  last  flood,  Ues  nearly  bare  to  the 
bone,  its  white  ribs  protruding  through  the  skin, 
raven-torn ;  and  the  rags  of  its  wool  still  flicker- 
ing from  the  branches  that  first  stayed  it  as  the 
stream  swept  it  down.  A  little  lower,  the  current 
plunges,  roaring,  into  a  circular  chasm  like  a 
well,  surrounded  on  three  sides  by  a  chimney- 
like hoUowness  of  polished  rock,  down  which  the 
foam  slips  in  detached  snow-flakes.  Round  the 
edges  of  the  pool  beneath,  the  water  circles 
slowly  like  black  oil ;  a  little  butterfly  lies  on  its 
back,  the  wings  glued  to  one  of  the  eddies,  its 
lihibs  feebly  quivering;  a  fish  arises,  and  it  is 
gone.  Lower  down  the  stream,  I  can  see  over  a 
knoll  the  green  and  damp  turf  roofs  of  four  or 
five  hovels,  built  at  the  edge  of  a  morass,  which 


KfORAUTtES.  187 

is  trodden  by  the  cattle  into  a  black  Slough  of 
Despond  at  their  doors,  and  traversed  by  a  few 
iU-set  stepping  stones,  with  here  and  there  a  flat 
slab  on  the  tops,  where  they  have  sunk  out  of 
sight;  —  and  at  the  tiuu  of  the  brook  I  see  a 
man  fishing,  with  a  boy  and  a  dog  —  a  pictu- 
resque and  pretty  group  enough  certainly,  if  they 
had  not  been  there  all  day  starving.  I  know 
them,  and  I  know  the  dog's  ribs  also,  which  are 
nearly  as  bare  as  the  dead  ewe's ;  and  the  child's 
wasted  shoulders,  cutting  his  old  tartan  jacket 
through,  so  sharp  are  they. 

88.  Perhaps  there  is  no  more  impressive  scene 
on  earth  than  the  solitary  extent  of  the  Cam- 
pagna  of  Rome  under  evening  light.  Let  the 
reader  imagine  himself  for  a  moment  withdrawn 
from  the  sounds  and  motion  of  the  living  world, 
and  sent  forth  alone  into  this  wild  and  wasted 
plain.  The  earth  yields  and  crumbles  beneath 
his  foot,  tread  he  never  so  lightly,  for  its  sub- 
stance is  white,  hollow,  and  carious,  like  the 


1 88  FJiONDES  AGRESTES. 

dusty  wreck  of  the  bones  of  men.  The  long 
knotted  grass  waves  and  tosses  feebly  in  the 
evening  wind,  and  the  shadows  of  its  motion 
shake  feverishly  along  the  banks  of  ruin  that  lift 
themselves  to  the  sunlight.  Hillocks  of  moulder- 
ing earth  heave  around  him,  as  if  the  dead 
beneath  were  struggling  in  their  sleep.  Scattered 
blocks  of  black  stone,  four-square  remnants  of 
mighty  edifices,  not  one  left  upon  another,  lie 
upon  them  to  keep  them  down.  A  dull  purple 
poisonous  haze  stretches  level  along  the  desert, 
veiling  its  spectral  wrecks  of  massy  ruins,  on 
whose  rents  the  red  light  rests,  like  dying  fire 
on  defiled  altars ;  the  blue  ridge  of  the  Alban 
Mount  lifts  itself  against  a  solemn  space  of  green, 
clear,  quiet  sky.  Watch-towers  of  dark  clouds 
stand  steadfastly  along  the  promontories  of  the 
Apennines.  From  the  plain  to  the  mountains, 
the  shattered  aqueducts,  pier  beyond  pier,  melt 
into  the  darkness,  like  shadowy  and  countless 
troops  of  funeral  mourners,  passing  from  a  na- 
tion's grave. 


MORAUTIES,  189 

89.  I  was  coming  down  one  evening  from 
the  Rochers  de  Naye,  above  Montreux,  having 
been  at  work  among  the  limestone  rocks,  where 
I  could  get  no  water,  and  both  weary  and 
thirsty.  Coming  to  a  spring  at  the  turn  of  the 
path,  conducted,  as  usual,  by  the  herdsmen,  into 
a  hollowed  pine  trunk,  I  stooped  to  it,  and 
drank  deeply.  As  I  raised  my  head,  drawing 
breath  heavily,  some  one  behind  me  said,  "  Celui 
qui  boira  de  cette  eau-ci,  aura  encore  soif."  I 
turned,  not  understanding  for  a  moment  what 
was  meant,  and  saw  one  of  the  hill  peasants, 
probably  returning  to  his  chalet  from  the  mar- 
ket place  at  Vevay  or  Villeneuve.  As  I  looked 
at  him  with  an  uncomprehending  expression,  he 
went  on  with  the  verse :  "  Mais  celui  qui  boira 
de  I'eau  que  je  lui  donnerai,  n'aura  jamais  soif." 

90.  It  may  perhaps  be  permitted  me*  to 
mark  the   significance  of  the  earliest   mention 

^With  reference  to  the  choice  of  mountain  dwellings  by 
the  greater  monastic  orders. 


ipo  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

of  mountains  in  the  Mosaic  books ;  at  least  of 
those  in  which  some  Divine  appointment  or 
command  is  stated  respecting  them.  They  are 
first  brought  before  us  as  refuges  for  God's 
people  from  the  two  judgments  of  water  and 
fire.  The  Ark  rests  upon  the  mountains  of 
Ararat;  and  man,  having  passed  through  the 
great  Baptism  unto  death,  kneels  upon  the  earth 
first  where  it  is  nearest  heaven,  and  mingles 
with  the  mountain  clouds  the  smoke  of  his  sac- 
rifice of  thanksgiving.  Again ;  from  the  midst  of 
the  first  judgment  by  fire,  the  command  of  the 
Deity  to  His  servant  is,  "  Escape  to  the  moun- 
tain ; "  and  the  morbid  fear  of  the  hills,  which 
fills  any  human  mind  after  long  stay  in  places 
of  luxury  and  sin,  is  strangely  marked  in  Lot's 
complaining  reply,  "I  cannot  escape  to  the 
mountain,  lest  some  evil  take  me."  The  third 
mention,  in  way  of  ordinance,  is  a  far  more 
solemn  one  :  "  Abraham  lifted  up  his  eyes  and 
saw  the  place  afar  off."  "The  Place,"  the  moun- 
tain of  myrrh,  or  of  bitterness,  chosen  to  fulfil 


MORAUTIES.  191 

to  all  the  seed  of  Abraham,  far  off  and  near, 
the  inner  meaning  of  promise  regarded  in  that 
vow :  "  I  will  lift  up  mine  eyes  unto  the  hills, 
from  whence  cometh  mine  help."  And  the 
fourth  is  the  delivery  of  the  law  on  Sinai.  It 
seemed  then  to  the  monks  that  the  mountains 
were  appointed  by  their  Maker  to  be  to  man 
refuges  from  judgment,  signs  of  redemption,  and 
altars  of  sanctification  and  obedience ;  and  they 
saw  them  aftemards  connected,  in  the  manner 
the  most  touching  and  gracious,  with  the  death, 
after  his  task  had  been  accomplished,  of  the  first 
anointed  Priest ;  the  death,  in  like  manner,  of 
the  first  inspired  Lawgiver ;  and  lastly,  with  the 
assumption  of  His  office,  by  the  Eternal  Priest, 
Lawgiver,  and  Saviour. 

Observe  the  connection  of  these  three  events. 
Although  the  time  of  the  deaths  of  Aaron  and 
Moses  was  hastened  by  God's  displeasure,  we 
have  not,  it  seems  to  me,  the  slightest  warrant 
for  concluding  that  the  manner  of  their  deaths 
was  intended   to   be   grievous   or   dishonorable 


192  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

to  them.  Far  from  this,  it  cannot,  I  think,  be 
doubted  that  in  the  denial  of  the  permission  to 
enter  the  Promised  Land,  the  whole  punishment 
of  their  sin  was  included ;  and  that,  as  far  as 
regarded  the  manner  of  their  deaths,  it  must 
have  been  appointed  for  them  by  their  Master, 
in  all  tenderness  and  love,  and  with  the  full  pur- 
pose of  ennobhng  the  close  of  their  service  upon 
the  earth.  It  might  have  seemed  to  us  more 
honorable  that  both  should  have  been  permitted 
to  die  beneath  the  shadow  of  the  Tabernacle,  the 
congregation  of  Israel  watching  by  their  side; 
and  all  whom  they  loved  gathered  together  to 
receive  the  last  message  from  the  lips  of  the 
meek  lawgiver,  and  the  last  blessing  from  the 
prayer  of  the  anointed  priest.  But  it  was  not 
thus  they  were  permitted  to  die.  Try  to  realize 
that  going  forth  of  Aaron  from  the  midst  of  the 
congregation.  He  who  had  so  often  done  sacri- 
fice for  their  sin,  going  forth  now  to  offer  up  his 
own  spirit.  He  who  had  stood  among  them 
between  the  dead  and  the  living,  and  had  seen 


AIORAUTIES.  193 

the  eyes  of  all  that  great  multitude  turned  to 
him,  that  by  his  intercession  their  breath  might 
yet  be  drawn  a  moment  more,  going  forth  now 
to  meet  the  angel  of  death  face  to  face,  and  de- 
liver himself  into  his  hand.  Try  if  you  cannot 
walk  in  thought  with  those  two  brothers,  and  the 
son,  as  they  passed  the  outmost  tents  of  Israel, 
and  turned,  while  yet  the  dew  lay  round  about 
the  camp,  towards  the  slopes  of  Mount  Hor; 
talking  together  for  the  last  time,  as  step  by  step 
they  felt  the  steeper  rising  of  the  rocks,  and  hour 
after  hour,  beneath  the  ascending  sun,  the  ho- 
rizon grew  broader  as  they  climbed,  and  all  the 
folded  hills  of  Idumea,  one  by  one  subdued, 
showed,  amidst  their  hollows  in  the  haze  of  noon, 
the  windings  of  that  long  desert  journey,  now 
at  last  to  close.  But  who  shall  enter  into  the 
thoughts  of  the  High  Priest  as  his  eye  followed 
those  paths  of  ancient  pilgrimage ;  and  through 
the  silence  of  the  arid  and  endless  hills,  stretch- 
ing even  to  the  dim  peak  of  Sinai,  the  whole 
history  of  those  forty  years  was  unfolded  before 


194  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

him,  and  the  mystery  of  his  own  ministries  re- 
vealed to  him  ;  and  that  other  Holy  of  Holies,  of 
which  the  mountain  peaks  were  the  altars,  and 
the  mountain  clouds  the  veil,  the  firmament  of 
his  Father's  dwelling,  opened  to  him  still  more 
brightly  and  infinitely  as  he  drew  nearer  his 
death?  —  until  at  last,  on  the  shadeless  summit, 
from  him  on  whom  sin  was  to  be  laid  no  more, 
from  him  on  whose  heart  the  names  of  sinful 
nations  were  to  press  their  graven  fire  no  longer, 
the  brother  and  the  son  took  breastplate  and 
ephod,  and  left  him  to  his  rest.  There  is  indeed 
a  secretness  in  this  calm  faith,  and  deep  restraint 
of  sorrow,  into  which  it  is  difficult  for  us  to  enter ; 
but  the  death  of  Moses  himself  is  more  easily  to 
be  conceived,  and  had  in  it  circumstances  still 
more  touching  as  regards  the  influence  of  the 
external  scene.  For  forty  years  Moses  had  not 
been  alone.  The  care  and  burden  of  all  the 
people,  the  weight  of  their  woe,  and  guilt,  and 
death,  had  been  upon  him  continually.  The 
multitude  had  been  laid  upon  him  as  if  he  had 


MORALITIES.  195 

conceived  them ;  their  tears  had  been  his  meat 
night  and  day,  until  he  had  felt  as  if  God  had 
withdrawn  His  favor  from  him,  and  he  had 
prayed  that  he  might  be  slain,  and  not  see  his 
wretchedness.  And  now  at  last  the  command 
came,  "Get  thee  up  into  this  mountain."  The 
weary  hands,  that  had  been  so  long  stayed  up 
against  the  enemies  of  Israel,  might  lean  again 
upon  the  shepherd's  staff,  and  fold  themselves 
for  the  shepherd's  prayer  —  for  the  shepherd's 
slumber.  Not  strange  to  his  feet,  though  forty 
years  unknown,  the  roughness  of  the  bare  moun- 
tain path,  as  he  climbed  from  ledge  to  ledge  of 
Abarim;  not  strange  to  his  aged  eyes  the  scat- 
tered clusters  of  the  mountain  herbage,  and  the 
broken  shadows  of  the  cliffs,  indented  far  across 
the  silence  of  uninhabited  ravines;  scenes  such 
as  those  among  which,  as  now,  with  none  beside 
him  but  God,  he  had  led  his  flocks  so  often ;  and 
which  he  had  left,  how  painfully !  taking  upon 
him  the  appointed  power  to  make  of  the  fenced 
city  a  wilderness,  and  to  fill  the  desert  with  songs 


196  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

of  deliverance.  It  was  not  to  embitter  the  last 
hours  of  his  life  that  God  restored  to  him  for 
a  day  the  beloved  solitudes  he  had  lost,  and 
breathed  the  peace  of  the  perpetual  hills  around 
him,  and  cast  the  world  in  which  he  had  labored, 
and  sinned,  far  beneath  his  feet  in  that  mist  of 
dying  blue ;  —  all  sin,  all  wandering,  soon  to  be 
forgotten  forever.  The  Dead  Sea  —  a  type  of 
God's  anger  understood  by  him,  of  all  men,  most 
clearly,  who  had  seen  the  earth  open  her  mouth, 
and  the  sea  his  depth,  to  overwhelm  the  com- 
panies of  those  who  contended  with  his  Master  — 
laid  waveless  beneath  him;  and  beyond  it  the 
fair  hills  of  Judah,  and  the  soft  plains  and  banks 
of  Jordan,  purple  in  the  evening  light  as  with  the 
blood  of  redemption,  and  fading  in  their  distant 
fulness  into  mysteries  of  promise  and  of  love. 
There,  with  his  unabated  strength,  his  undimmed 
glance,  lying  down  upon  the  utmost  rocks,  with 
angels  waiting  near  to  contend  for  the  spoils  of 
his  spirit,  he  put  off  his  earthly  armor.  We  do 
deep  reverence   to  his  companion  prophet,  for 


MORAUTIES.  197 

whom  the  chariot  of  fire  came  down  firom 
heaven;  but  was  his  death  less  noble  whom  his 
Lord  Himself  buried  in  the  vales  of  Moab,  keep- 
ing, in  the  secrets  of  the  eternal  counsels,  the 
knowledge  of  a  sepulchre,  fi"om  which  he  was  to 
be  called  in  the  fulness  of  time,  to  talk  with  that 
Lord  upon  Hermon  of  the  death  that  He  should 
accomplish  at  Jerusalem? 

And  lastly,  let  us  turn  our  thoughts  for  a  few 
moments  to  the  cause  of  the  resurrection  of  these 
two  prophets.  We  are  all  of  us  too  much  in  the 
habit  of  passing  it  by,  as  a  thing  mystical  and  in- 
conceivable, taking  place  in  the  life  of  Christ  for 
some  purpose  not  by  us  to  be  understood,  or,  at  the 
best,  merely  as  a  manifestation  of  His  divinity  by 
brightness  of  heavenly  light,  and  the  ministering 
of  the  spirits  of  the  dead,  intended  to  strengthen 
the  faith  of  His  three  chosen  apostles.  And  in 
this,  as  in  many  other  events  recorded  by  the 
Evangelists,  we  lose  half  the  meaning,  and  evade 
the  practical  power  upon  ourselves,  by  never  ac- 
cepting in  its  fulness  the  idea  that  our  Lord  was 


198  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

"perfect  man,"  —  "tempted  in  all  things  like  as 
we  are."  Our  preachers  are  continually  trying,  in 
all  manner  of  subtle  ways,  to  explain  the  union  of 
the  Divinity  with  the  Manhood  —  an  explanation 
which  certainly  involves  first  their  being  able  to 
describe  the  nature  of  Deity  itself,  or,  in  plain 
words,  to  comprehend  God.  They  never  can  ex- 
plain, in  any  one  particular,  the  union  of  the 
natures ;  they  only  succeed  in  weakening  the  faith 
of  their  hearers  as  to  the  entireness  of  either. 
The  thing  they  have  to  do  is  precisely  the  con- 
trary of  this  —  to  insist  upon  the  entireness  of 
both.  We  never  think  of  Christ  enough  as  God, 
never  enough  as  Man;  the  instinctive  habit  of 
our  minds  being  always  to  miss  of  the  Divinity, 
and  the  reasoning  and  enforced  habit  to  miss  of 
the  humanity.  We  are  afraid  to  harbor  in  our 
own  hearts,  or  to  utter  in  the  hearing  of  others, 
any  thought  of  our  Lord  as  hungering,  tired,  sor- 
rowful, having  a  human  soul,  a  human  will,  and 
affected  by  events  of  human  life,  as  a  finite  crea- 
ture is  :  and  yet  one  half  ,of  the  efficiency  of  His 


MORALITIES.  199 

atonement,  and  the  whole  of  the  efificiency  of 
His  example,  depend  on  His  having  been  this  to 
the  full.  Consider,  therefore,  the  Transfiguration 
as  it  relates  to  the  human  feelings  of  our  Lord. 
It  was  the  first  definite  preparation  for  His  death. 
He  had  foretold  it  to  His  disciples  six  days  be- 
fore ;  then  takes  with  Him  the  three  chosen  ones 
into  "  an  high  mountain  apart."  From  an  ex- 
ceeding high  mountain,  at  the  first  taking  on  Him 
the  ministry  of  life,  He  had  beheld  and  rejected 
the  kingdoms  of  the  earth,  and  their  glory  :  now, 
on  a  high  mountain.  He  takes  upon  Him  the 
ministry  of  death.  Peter  and  they  that  were 
with  Him,  as  in  Gethsemane,  were  heavy  with 
sleep.     Christ's  work  had  to  be  done  alone. 

The  tradition  is  that  the  Mount  of  Transfigu- 
ration was  the  summit  of  Tabor;  but  Tabor  is 
neither  a  high  mountain,  nor  was  it  in  any  sense 
a  mountain  ^^ apart"  being  in  those  years  both 
inhabited  and  fortified.  All  the  immediately  pre- 
ceding ministries  of  Christ  had  been  at  Cesarea 
Philippi.    There  is  no  mention  of  travel  south- 


200  FRONDES  AGRESTES. 

ward  in  the  six  days  that  intervened  between 
the  warning  given  to  His  disciples  and  the  going 
up  into  the  hill.  What  other  hill  could  it  be  than 
the  southward  slope  of  that  goodly  mountain, 
Hermon,  which  is  indeed  the  centre  of  all  the 
Promised  Land,  from  the  entering  in  of  Hamath 
unto  the  river  of  Egypt ;  the  mount  of  fruitful- 
ness,  from  which  the  springs  of  Jordan  descended 
to  the  valleys  of  Israel?  Along  its  mighty  forest 
avenues,  until  the  grass  grew  fair  with  the  moun- 
tain lilies,  His  feet  dashed  in  the  dew  of  Hermon, 
He  must  have  gone  to  pray  His  first  recorded 
prayer  about  death ;  and  from  the  steep  of  it,  be- 
fore He  knelt,  could  see  to  the  south  all  the 
dwellings  of  the  people  that  had  sat  in  darkness, 
and  seen  the  great  light,  the  land  of  Zabulon  and 
of  Naphtali,  Galilee  of  the  nations,  —  could  see, 
even  with  His  human  sight,  the  gleam  of  that 
lake  by  Capernaum  and  Chorazin,  and  many  a 
a  place  loved  by  Him,  and  vainly  ministered  to, 
whose  house  was  now  left  unto  them  desolate; 
and  chief  of  all,  far  in  the  utmost  blue,  the  hills 


MORAUTIES.  20 1 

above  Nazareth,  sloping  down  to  His  old  home ; 
hills  on  which  yet  the  stones  lay  loose  that  had 
been  taken  up  to  cast  at  Him  when  He  left  them 
forever. 

"  And  as  He  prayed,  two  men  stood  by  Him." 
Among  the  many  ways  in  which  we  miss  the  help 
and  hold  of  Scripture,  none  is  more  subtle  than 
our  habit  of  supposing  that,  even  as  man,  Christ 
was  free  from  the  fear  of  death.  How  could 
He  then  have  been  tempted  as  we  are?  —  since 
among  all  the  trials  of  the  earth,  none  spring 
from  the  dust  more  terrible  than  that  fear.  It 
had  to  be  borne  by  Him,  indeed,  in  a  unity  which 
we  can  never  comprehend,  with  the  foreknowl- 
edge of  victory,  —  as  His  sorrow  for  Lazarus 
with  the  consciousness  of  His  power  to  restore 
him ;  but  it  had  to  be  borne,  and  that  in  its  full 
earthly  terror;  and  the  presence  of  it  is  surely 
marked  for  us  enough  by  the  rising  of  those  two 
at  His  side.  When,  in  the  desert.  He  was  gird- 
ing Himself  for  the  work  of  life,  angels  of  life 
came  and  ministered  to  Him;  now  in  the  fair 


202  FRONDES  ACRES TES. 

world,  when  He  is  girding  Himself  for  the  work 
of  death,  the  ministrants  come  to  Him  from  the 
grave.  But,  from  the  grave,  conquered.  One 
from  that  tomb  under  Abarim,  which  His  own 
hand  had  sealed  long  ago ;  the  other,  from  the 
rest  into  which  he  had  entered  without  seeing  cor- 
ruption. "There  stood  by  Him  Moses  and 
Elias,  and  spake  of  His  decease."  Then,  when 
the  prayer  is  ended,  the  task  accepted,  first,  since 
the  star  paused  over  Him  at  Bethlehem,  the  full 
glory  falls  upon  Him  from  heaven,  and  the  testi- 
timony  is  borne  to  His  everlasting  Sonship  and 
power.     "  Hear  ye  Him." 

If,  in  their  remembrance  of  these  things,  and 
in  their  endeavor  to  follow  in  the  footsteps 
of  their  Master,  religious  men  of  bygone  days, 
closing  themselves  in  the  hill  solitudes,  forgot 
sometimes,  and  sometimes  feared,  the  duties  they 
owed  to  the  active  world,  we  may  perhaps  pardon 
them  more  easily  than  we  ought  to  pardon  our- 
selves, if  we  neither  seek  any  influence  for  good, 
nor  submit  to  it  unsought,  in  scenes  to  which 


MORAUTIES.  ao3 

thus  all  the  men  whose  writings  we  receive  as  in- 
spired, together  with  their  Lord,  retired  whenever 
they  had  any  task  or  trial  laid  upon  them  needing 
more  than  their  usual  strength  of  spirit.  Nor 
perhaps  should  we  have  unprofitably  entered  into 
the  mind  of  the  earlier  ages,  if  among  our  other 
thoughts,  as  we  watch  the  chains  of  the  snowy 
mountains  rise  on  the  horizon,  we  should  some- 
times admit  the  memory  of  the  hour  in  which 
their  Creator,  among  their  solitudes,  entered  on 
His  travail  for  the  salvation  of  our  race ;  and  in- 
dulge the  dream,  that  as  the  flaming  and  trem- 
bling mountains  of  the  earth  seem  to  be  the 
monuments  of  the  manifesting  of  His  terror  on 
Sinai,  these  pure  and  white  hills,  near  to  the 
heaven,  and  sources  of  all  good  to  the  earth,  are 
the  appointed  memorials  of  that  light  of  His 
mercy,  that  fell,  snowlike,  on  the  Mount  of 
Transfiguration. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY,  LOS  ANGELES 

COLLEGE  LIBRARY 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


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